


Wonderful

by Page161of180



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Deserves Nice Things, Alex Manes is Not Okay, And Deserves to Believe that He Deserves Them, Angst and Feels, Character Death In Dream, Christmas Eve, Happy Ending, Holiday Blues, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) References, M/M, Mimi Deluca's visions, POV Alex Manes, Past Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, and learning to accept it, brief background Maria Deluca, but he's getting there, cosmic love, references to Jesse Manes' abuse, references to Jesse Manes' war crimes, references to torture and medical experimentation, the general spate of Caulfield Prison horrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:08:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28219746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Page161of180/pseuds/Page161of180
Summary: When Alex makes himself look over to meet Michael’s eyes, his breath catches at the open adoration on his cowboy’s face. ‘Feliz Navidad’ is blaring from the horns under the gazebo, and mothers are chasing good-naturedly after their shrieking children. There’s desert-inappropriate artificial pine wound around every streetlight and Michael Guerin is looking at Alex like there’s nothing else worth seeing in either of their galaxies. This is what every Christmas song that Alex has ever flipped the radio station to avoid says he should want. And he does want it. But the flip side of wanting, for Alex, has always been wondering why he deserves it, when so many people don’t get what they want. When so many people don’t get what they want because of the things Alex’s family has done.It suddenly all feels like nowhere near enough, the few things he’s offered, to put this soft, awestruck look on Michael’s face.Alex Manes has everything he wants for Christmas, and no idea why someone with his legacy deserves it.Mimi Deluca sees things no one else can-- including a world where the Manes Men never existed.It's a Wonderful (Roswellian) Life.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 28
Kudos: 102





	Wonderful

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again, friends! I'm back with another story I didn't expect to write. I blame _It's a Wonderful Life_ , which always gets me in my feelings. And also Alex Manes, who does the same. I mean, come on: A guy who hates his hometown, but loves the people in it; who tried as hard as he could to run away but can't break free; who has a deeply complicated relationship with his family's business; who has at least one dear friend who can see futures; and who persistently fails to see how much better he makes the people around him? This thing practically wrote itself. 
> 
> This story is set some nebulous amount of time after the events of Season 2, when Alex and Michael have already found their way back to each other and are making their relationship work. As a result, this story isn't about losing love or finding love, but learning to accept that you deserve (cosmic) love. That can be easier said than done, especially for a guy who takes 'what I want doesn't matter' as a catchphrase. 
> 
> Mimi Deluca is the other major player in this story. I've taken some liberties with exactly what the scope of her ability to see visions is, but I hope it feels canon-ish. There's something profoundly moving to me about this Cassandra character who sees so much yet can't make herself understood to the people around her, especially when the people around her are the kids she helped raise, who she wants to help so much. I hope this story does her justice. 
> 
> Just a few more things: Please be aware that the vision that Mimi Deluca shows Alex in this story gets pretty dark. Like, Caulfield dark. Generally you can expect to see the kind of things we saw in canon: forced imprisonment, violence, medical experimentation, death-- all hitting even closer to home. None if it is 'real' within the confines of the story, but the feelings it provokes for Alex are. As always, take care and feel free to send a comment if there are any specific cw questions you have that aren't answered here.
> 
> In terms of matters ship-related, this story is all cosmic, all the time. There are references to Michael's past relationship with Maria-- and specifically with the insecurities that Alex has (and isn't quite admitting) about that past relationship. Maria and Alex's own friendship is also a background thread here. They care for each other, but they're not okay yet. And that in itself is okay. 
> 
> Finally, I want to specifically flag, for anyone concerned, that unlike in the movie that inspires this story, Alex is not contemplating suicide at any point in the piece. No one is. The journey Alex takes isn't about whether he should live, but how to accept that his worthiness of love and happiness doesn't depend on his ability to erase the ugly legacy that he was born into. For that reason, this story is my Christmas card to everyone who, like Alex in this story, has a hard time figuring out where they fit in a season that's all about merry and bright. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> (P.S. The title, in addition to being an obvious play on the movie title, is also an homage to the unrelated Adam Ant song. So, never fear-- the R:NM 90's-music-titles tradition lives on.)

I.

Alex is self-aware enough to know that this is close to the last place he should be on Christmas Eve. Something about the sound of the upbeat brass horns drifting from the gazebo across the square, combined with the sight of the evergreen wreath-- complete with regulation fake-velvet bow-- that someone actually took the time to hang _here_ , of all places, is making Alex feel like even more of a grinch than usual. Even more of a fraud than usual, too-- like the dark cloud lurking over all these happy Who’s, who _weren’t_ born with blood on their hands that never seems to wash all the way clean, no matter how hard he tries.

When this joke of a memorial first went up, months after its honoree was shot by his own son in the middle of his final stab at successfully executing a genocide, Michael had offered to blow the damn thing apart with his mind. Alex had snorted and answered that it wasn’t worth blowing Michael and his family’s cover in the process, his gaze lingering in a way that probably gave away exactly where their post-Maria, post-Forrest attempt at being ‘just friends’ was headed. Michael had settled for putting a gaping crack down one side of the obelisk, which appeared mysteriously one morning a few weeks after the public dedication and just so happened to run directly through the words “Beloved Father.” By the time the town council decided that there wasn’t room in the parks budget for a repair, things between Alex and Michael had progressed to the point that Alex didn’t have to try to hide the affection laced through his gratitude. He’d made an attempt anyway, telling Michael in stern tones that were probably undercut by his arms slipping beneath the shearling lining of his boyfriend’s jacket that Michael shouldn’t take risks like that for him. Michael, predictably, had promised that Alex was worth any risk. And when Alex, predictably, had fought him tooth-and-nail on that point, Michael had rolled his eyes and said that defacing Jesse’s monument was for himself as much as it was for Alex, anyway. 

The wind picks up-- not that anyone in the joyful crowd besides Alex seems to notice-- and one lopsided tail of the wreath’s alarm-red bow shifts to obscure the words “But Never Forgotten” etched into shiny black granite, so that this side of the obelisk just reads “Fallen.” 

Wouldn’t it be nice, Alex thinks, if it were that easy.

“Lump of coal woulda been a better choice, don’t ya think?”

The familiar drawl settles warm and heavy over Alex, even as he continues to stare daggers at the offending wreath. He hears bootsteps stop a pace away, feels the otherworldly heat that Michael gives off, even across the polite six-inches distance that Michael always leaves between them when they’re out around town-- an instinct drilled in by years of not daring to lay any public claim to Alex. When Alex is well aware that Michael’s preference is to plaster himself all over his partner, for all the world to see. The way Alex had watched him do for months with--

Well. One more thing that a Manes Man has taken from Michael. 

Not that Michael seems to feel the loss, today. When Alex turns to face him, Michael looks, for lack of a better description, like a little kid on Christmas-- the same way he has for weeks. It’s a little kick to the chest every time every time Alex thinks too hard about it. Not because Alex doesn’t love seeing Michael like this-- grin wide and easy, his curls blowing wild as he juggles overflowing grocery bags that he could easily keep afloat with his telekinesis, the same way he’s jerry-rigged a transformer station’s worth of blinking lights to cover his trailer and Alex’s patio both. But because Michael’s so damned happy just for the opportunity to put up a bottle-brush tree and drink mostly-whiskey eggnog with someone he-- with Alex. With someone he cares about. Because in every previous year that Michael has spent on a planet that has a Christmas, that opportunity has been taken from him. By the men who captured his mother, by the man who ran half away across the planet when Michael just wanted him to stay. All with one thing in common. 

Alex forces out a steady breath, and makes himself turn to Michael. 

“Let me help with that,” he says, reaching for the bag that’s about to take a header onto the sidewalk. 

Michael spares a glance at Alex’s prosthetic, but he gives the bag over without question-- one more reason for Alex to love him. 

“What’s even in here?” he asks as he adjusts the bag with a grunt, pretending he doesn’t feel the tell-tale kick of Michael’s telekinesis supporting some of the weight. “I thought you already went grocery shopping Monday night, after you were done with Sanders.”

“Aww, Private-- you keepin’ an eye on me?” 

Alex rolls his eyes once again at whatever strain of alien madness has led Michael to believe that crossing spaghetti westerns with the script of a lame ‘70s porno is the key to seduction. It’s ridiculous that it works as well as it does-- as it always has-- on Alex. When he answers, his voice is soft and measured, a quiet huff that just barely travels the distance between them.

“I don’t look away, Guerin.” 

Michael doesn’t answer right away-- a feat in itself. When Alex makes himself look over to meet Michael’s eyes, his breath catches at the open adoration on his cowboy’s face. ‘Feliz Navidad’ is blaring from the horns under the gazebo, and mothers are chasing good-naturedly after their shrieking children. There’s desert-inappropriate artificial pine wound around every streetlight and Michael Guerin is looking at Alex like there’s nothing else worth seeing in either of their galaxies. This is what every Christmas song that Alex has ever flipped the radio station to avoid says he should want. And he does want it. But the flip side of wanting, for Alex, has always been wondering why he deserves it, when so many people _don’t_ get what they want. When so many people don’t get what they want _because_ of the things Alex’s family has done. 

It suddenly all feels like nowhere near enough, the few things he’s offered, to put this soft, awestruck look on Michael’s face. A few borrowed words, measured out in Alex’s deliberate, unromantic tone. A hand with the groceries. Being willing to actually stick by Michael’s side this year, to let Michael feed him and decorate his house and queue up old Christmas movies for him, instead of running scared again. All the while, a damned monument to the supposed heroism of Master Sergeant Manes stands tall and proud in the center of town, tied up with a literal bow, casting shadows shaped like all the things that the Manes Men have broken that Alex has barely scratched the surface of making up for.

It doesn’t feel like a fair trade, after everything Alex and his family have put Michael through. And not so long ago, whispers a taunting voice that Alex normally manages to ignore, Michael didn’t think it was a fair trade, either. Why else would have been so quick to leave Alex and his bad memories and his ugly file folders in the past, while starting over fresh and clean with--

They reach Michael’s truck, and not a moment too soon. Alex knows the patterns of his own mind. Has studied them and mapped them the way he would any hostile terrain. He is well aware that the minute his thoughts turn to the memory of those months watching Michael choose simple and happy and uncomplicated with Alex’s best friend, is about two minutes _past_ when Alex should have already beaten a conversational retreat.

Michael doesn’t seem to realize that, asking as he settles the bags in the bed of the truck whether he’ll still see Alex tonight, after he’s honored his sister’s request to at least drop by Ann Evans’ annual Christmas party. 

“You could always come with,” he offers, pushing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “I know Iz’s mom would rather have the wounded warrior on her guest list than the town deadbeat.”

Or maybe Michael _does_ sense that something is off, Alex amends, noticing the way the ends of his sentences rise up like a question, the way his gaze keeps drifting to Alex’s shoes, like he’s expecting Alex to run.

Alex takes another steadying breath and fists both hands in Michael’s lapels. It’s not new for him anymore, this kind of PDA, but he’s not sure it will ever stop feeling dangerous. Exposed. All the same, it’s the least-- the absolute least-- that he can do for Michael right now, after opening the door again to all those insecurities that he told Michael-- sang to Michael-- he was going to take down stone by stone.

“After,” he promises, leaning close so that their foreheads nearly touch. “Go show up for Isobel and Max, and after that it’ll just be you and me. I promise.” 

The carved words on the monument behind him-- “Fallen But Never Forgotten”-- mock the idea that it will ever _just_ be Alex and Michael, especially tonight when all the love and light and Christmas bells are illuminating exactly how much darkness makes up Alex, by comparison. But Michael just offers that same lovestruck smile, before pulling out of Alex’s grip and hopping into the truck.

“I’ll hold you to that, Private,” he says, revving up the ancient engine. “It’s like the song says: all I want for Christmas is you.”

The horns in the gazebo start up as if on cue, while Alex watches the truck fade into a baby blue blur, and wonders how that can possibly be true.

  
  
  


The question of how Alex is going to occupy himself while Michael visits with the Evanses-- without torturing himself with the kinds of thoughts he spends 364 days a year carefully and methodically and ruthlessly suppressing-- is answered when his phone starts buzzing and lights up with Maria’s name.

He doesn’t mean to flinch. He wants to believe that he wouldn’t have, on a better day. He’s had time to come to terms with what happened between Maria and Michael, and he’s not mad that Maria chose to date the man Alex, in however poor a fashion, has always loved; he was being honest when he told Maria that he couldn’t possibly blame someone for falling for Michael Guerin. He wasn’t even really hurt by the fact that Maria, knowing what she knew about Alex’s feelings, decided to pursue something with Michael anyway. Not by that decision alone, at any rate. 

What he _was_ hurt by-- what he was hurt by more than he can let himself fully comprehend, even now that Michael is saving his cowboy come-ons for Alex alone once again-- is how _easy_ it was for Maria to be all the things that Alex can’t ever be for Michael. 

A beautiful beginning. A story with no sad chapters. 

In other words, it’s not what Maria _did_ that could kill Alex if he let it; it’s who she _is_ \-- and who Alex isn’t. And that’s not something Alex will allow himself to blame her for. 

He shakes the thoughts away and makes himself answer the phone. 

“Alex? Oh, thank God!” 

He can hear the sounds of the Wild Pony in full swing in the background, even though it’s barely five o’clock. Apparently Alex isn’t the only one who could use a break from the Christmas spirit. 

Maria gets her reason for calling out in fits and starts around shouting at unnamed patrons to hold their horses. The bartender scheduled for tonight called out and no one else is willing to fill in on Christmas Eve. Which means that Mimi is alone at Sunset Mesa, at least until Maria can throw her patrons out, which she swears-- more to the people in the room with her than to Alex, he thinks-- is going to be no later than ten. Earlier if they don’t shape up.

“You wouldn’t have to stay with her that whole time,” Maria insists, her voice dropping low enough that Alex can hear how frayed it sounds, even as she rules over the crowd with unfailing confidence. “I don’t even know if she realizes what night it is, I just hate the idea of her all alone--”

“Maria, it’s fine,” Alex interrupts, steady and firm. “I’m happy to keep her company for a little while. Mimi was like a mom to me growing up; you know that.”

He thinks he hears Maria breathe out a sob over the line. It makes him feel even worse about how _off_ things still are between them. 

“Thank you so much, Alex; you have no idea how much it means to me. I would have asked Liz and Rosa, but I know they already promised to go to Mass with Arturo, and-- _wave that dollar at me one more time and see how long it takes to get your refill!_ \-- Isobel has her mom’s thing, and--” 

She stops abruptly, the background noise of the Pony taking over for a breath. “Oh my God. I’m such an idiot. You and Michael must--”

“It’s fine,” he interrupts again, a little less steady this time. There’s something in him that’s not ready to hear her ask whether he and Michael have Christmas Eve plans. “It’s-- he’s going to Isobel’s thing. We-- we’re not meeting up until after.”

He doesn’t say it to rub her nose in the fact. But there’s another pause over the line all the same, in which Alex finds himself wondering-- not for the first time-- if Maria blames _him_ for choosing to date Michael, knowing how she used to feel about him. If she finds it as mystifying as Alex himself does, what exactly it is that _Alex_ offers, that Maria couldn’t give better and warmer and without the blood of Michael’s family’s tormentors running through her veins.

But when Maria finally speaks, her voice is soft and genuine, barely audible over the sounds of the bar. “I’m glad, Alex. You deserve a nice Christmas.” 

Alex keeps his back stubbornly to Jesse’s memorial even as his eyes squeeze shut. 

  
  
  


The streetlights and the Christmas lights are switching on by the time Alex gets to his SUV and sets out toward Sunset Mesa. Other drivers probably find something comforting in the illuminated stars and even the glowing green aliens with Santa hats outside Bean Me Up. Alex tries to do the same. But the soft glow of the lights against the darkening expanse of the endless southwestern sky only highlights the vulnerability that Alex-- who has seen towns bigger than this reduced to rubble, that Alex himself has helped reduce to rubble-- knows lurks beneath the surface. The kind of vulnerability that people like the man whose memorial stands underneath one of those light-up stars know how to manipulate. It makes each blinking string of icicle lights seem to underline a way that Alex hasn’t done enough to protect the people who hung them from the all-consuming violence that is Alex’s birthright.

There’s the Ortechos in the Crashdown, who lost Rosa for a decade because of a killer that Project Shepherd hid from public view. There’s the memory of a teenage boy standing nervously at the ticket counter of the UFO Emporium, who didn’t deserve to lose the use of his hand as the price for making Alex feel adored, for the first time in his life-- and who didn’t deserve to be left behind by Alex, after. A few streets away is the Evans house, lights straighter than anyone else on the block, with no idea how close their son and daughter have come to rotting away in a windowless cell in a secret prison. Another block passes and it’s the police station, where Jim Valenti-- who did as much to protect Alex as anyone-- used to keep about a hundred pictures of Kyle on the desk that belongs to his widow now, ever since Jesse found a way to weaponize the refugees he kept in perpetual detention. A few more blocks and it’s the Wild Pony, and a mess of Alex’s own making, all because he made it so damn hard for Michael to choose _him_.

It’s a relief once he’s outside city limits and there’s only desert on either side. Before long, he sees the herd of inflatable reindeer lining Sunset Mesa’s driveway. They can’t quite distract from how lonely the half-empty parking lot seems; Alex understands looking at it why Maria hated the idea of Mimi having no visitors tonight. He makes his way across the parking lot, ignoring the ache that says he’s spent too long walking on the prosthetic today. 

It only takes a few minutes to sign in at the desk where a tired-looking woman with a flashing headband hands him a sticky nametag. When he reaches Mimi’s door, he knocks softly, then steps inside-- carefully-- when he gets no answer. He can’t remember the last time he moved like there _wasn’t_ a threat on the other side of any doorway, anywhere. 

But tonight there’s no nightmare waiting for him when he steps over the threshold, just Mimi dozing in her bed while a black-and-white movie plays on the small TV on the dresser. Even in her sleep, Mimi looks like she’s only half-tethered to this world, Alex notices. It makes him frown, wondering if there’s something that he could be doing to help her, but isn’t.

Alex puts the thought from his mind as he walks the perimeter of the small room, smiling wistfully at pictures of the Maria he remembers from growing up. At the colorful scarves that have Maria’s fingerprints all over them and the pricier, desert-toned ones that clearly come from ‘Aunt Isobel.’ At the silver pendants that look like the ones his mom favors-- or used to, the last time Alex saw her in person.

_She_ didn’t go to the dedication of Master Sergeant Manes’ memorial, either.

While Alex stops in front of a picture of a much younger, pregnant Mimi, looking vivid and alert and so present, the way he’s only seen her in snatched seconds since he came back to Roswell, his phone buzzes with a message. 

Michael. 

_Talking to Santa. He wants to know if you’ve been a good boy this year_ , Alex reads, the corner of his mouth twisting up in spite of himself. He’s guessing Michael’s gotten back at least a glass of Ann Evans’ high-dollar champagne, then. Isobel will have her hands full keeping him in line around the more buttoned-up guests-- or forcing Max to do it.

A couple seconds later the phone buzzes again, and Alex reassesses whether it’s just been the one glass. 

_Can’t wait to have you in my arms tonight_ , it says this time. _My Christmas wish ten years running._

It’s another Hallmark-perfect moment, and it sends Alex sinking into the coral-colored chair that matches Mimi’s bedspread, his low back twinging as he sits. There’s so damn much that Michael-- of all people-- should want more than Alex. So much more he deserves and has never been allowed to have. And it’s taken Alex _ten damn years_ to give over this one meager consolation prize Michael has always been asking for.

Alex feels something that could become a scream, if he’d let it, building up in his chest. But it’s not the time or place for that; it never is. So he drops his head into his hands and leans forward, recovery position, forcing his focus on his breath. In slowly, then out slower. 

He repeats it twice, because that’s what he tells himself he’s going to do. That’s how long he’ll give himself to get this under control. 

It works, like it always does. Like he always makes sure it does.

He looks up after he releases the last exhale, checking to see whether Mimi has woken up, glad to see that she hasn’t. That he hasn’t disturbed her. 

He’s not sure how long she’ll nap, but he doesn’t want to leave so soon, when he promised Maria he’d provide company. Besides, Michael has at least another couple hours of mandatory socializing before Isobel sets him loose. So Alex settles in, shifting in the overstuffed chair to try to find a posture that will make his lower body shut up. Once he finds a position that’s comfortable enough, he lets his gaze drift toward the television. 

It takes a few seconds to recognize what’s playing. He didn’t exactly grow up in a Christmas movie household, but he knows this one. He remembers watching part of it on his teammate Giannotta’s scratched-up laptop screen one scalding-hot Christmas Eve, while most of the guys on base-- not quite as sentimental as the newlywed computer specialist who was spending Christmas 6,000 miles away from her new husband-- watched _National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation_. 

_It’s A Wonderful Life_. 

For some more than others, Alex can’t help but think. The movie’s just started, but his mind fast-forwards, to when the angel shows the guy tethered to a hometown he hates how much worse-off everyone would be in a world where he’d never been born. Alex may not be standing on the edge of a bridge like the man in the movie; he may have put a lot of time and work and sheer stubbornness into cultivating enough hope in a world that so often disappoints it, to stop himself from becoming a guy standing on the edge of a bridge like the man in the movie. But he still can’t help but draw the contrast with what a higher power could show _Alex_ about a world where Alex had never existed. Or, even more damning, a world where _none_ of the Manes Men ever existed. He can’t help but suspect that the movie’s uplifting message would be compromised, in that case. That anyone watching would be forced to conclude that, whatever good or bad Alex has managed to do in his own right, it can’t possibly offset the myriad ways the world is worse for having had the Manes family in it.

“Only one way to find out, honey.”

Alex startles at the unexpected voice, familiar as it is. He looks over to the bed and sees that Mimi is no longer napping, but awake. Wide awake. Her eyes aren’t just open, but alert, and sharp-- and locked on Alex. The look in them brings Alex back to an otherwise unremarkable afternoon over ten years ago, when Mimi had taken Alex’s bruised chin in her hand and said that Jesse was wrong about it being something to be ashamed of, without Alex ever having told her what he’d done-- or rather what he’d been-- that Jesse had deemed a backhanding offense. Alex is embarrassed to admit that he’d started assuming that look was gone forever, sometime around the fifth or sixth visit when he’d had to interrupt Mimi’s distant-voiced predictions about future girlfriends to remind her that that’s not who he is. 

Part of him wonders if Mimi really _can_ hear his thoughts, when her eyebrows rise in an unimpressed expression that’s so Maria it hurts. 

That expression is the last thing Alex sees before the world goes phosphorus bright around him. He has just enough time, before raising an arm in front of his eyes, to offer a silent apology to the cowboy who’s still expecting him for Christmas, after all these years.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


II.

Alex knows what it looks like-- sounds like, feels like-- when the world goes up in fire around him. This . . . isn’t that. 

For one thing, the blinding flash that he covered his eyes to block turns out not to have been a flash at all. He waits, with his arm over his eyes, for the brightness to subside. But there’s no change in the light that seeps in through his closed lids.

It’s quiet, too. Not the concussive silence that pulses and shakes around you, that tells you that the whole world is screaming and it’s just your own brain that’s too scrambled to hear it. But the kind of unexceptional, murmuring quiet that usually envelopes Sunset Mesa. Someone else’s television playing through the wall. The occasional voice from another room. The lilt of someone’s walker plodding down the hallway. Nothing to suggest they’re in the middle of an imminent catastrophe.

He doesn’t feel like any parts of his body have been ripped away this time, either. So that’s something. 

Slowly, steadily, he lowers his arm. The room is still too bright, like everything is radiating its own glow, instead of just reflecting light. But the brilliant white glare from a moment before has been replaced by supersaturated colors that are so intense it makes it hard to tell where one ends and another begins. 

It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. Which is why it takes him that long to notice that he’s no longer in Mimi’s room at Sunset Mesa. Or rather, he is. The dimensions, the location of the door and the window, the proximity to the nearest emergency exit according to the safety placard posted on the wooden wardrobe door-- they’re all the same. But it’s clearly not _Mimi_ ’s room anymore. The photos are gone, and so are the scarves and the necklaces. 

And so, he registers with a jolt of panic, is Mimi. 

“You always were a protector, even when you were a little boy.” 

Alex whips around, careful not to overbalance on his prosthesis. And thank God-- _there_ is Mimi. No longer in the bed, somehow. But propped against in the doorframe in a flowing white skirt and a long white sweater that both glow so brightly Alex’s eyes water. 

Her smile nearly rivals them. 

“Alex Manes,” Mimi continues, slowly stepping closer. “You blink and find yourself somewhere all together else, and your heart rate doesn’t budge. But the second you think your friend’s poor old mother might be missing, that big heart of yours is a bird battering at its cage.”

Alex doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Mimi comes to a stop less than a foot away from him, her strong, wiry hands rising to rest lightly on the at-the-ready hunch of his shoulders. 

“It’s good to see you here, honey.”

Alex makes himself take a steady breath, get that bird-- which he fears has grown up a lot smaller and sicklier than Mimi seems to remember-- to stop rattling against its bars. 

“And where is ‘here,’ exactly?”

He knows he sounds grim and business-like. He’s using his ‘serious Captain voice,’ as Michael calls it-- with more and less patience-- when Alex inevitably finds himself in the middle of one hostile situation or another, cobbling together strategies that Michael and his siblings will only ignore in favor of blind instinct and a shared overprotective streak. But Mimi’s smile just goes mischievous in response. 

“I know Liz was always the genius of your little circle, but you’re not a lost cause yourself. Where do you think we are, Alex?”

Alex pushes down the bittersweet realization of how much he’d allowed them to fade-- his memories of how sly and socratic Mimi could be. Never outright saying the secret things she seemed to know, but inviting others in all the same. So different than his authoritarian bastard of a father, or even the non-nightmare parents he knew, like the doting, dutiful Valentis. He focuses instead on the challenge in Mimi’s question, clocking the available information. He considers the lens-flare halos surrounding everything in the room, the way that nothing seems to cast a shadow in the direction it should, the unearthly colors . . . 

Oh, right. He should have already realized.

“Are we in _my_ head?” he asks, deliberate and steady. “Or yours?”

Mimi gives his shoulders an affectionate squeeze before letting go. “ _Very_ good. You must be spending time with my Aunt Isobel, if you can recognize the mindspace so easily.” 

She says ‘aunt’ with the same sarcastic inflection that Maria uses when reciting Isobel’s self-given title. But Mimi’s smirk turns considering as her gaze lingers on Alex. “Or maybe,” she amends, “you recognize it from somewhere else.”

Alex feels his face go hot, although he doesn’t think he lets his expression change. Because while he has spent enough time with Isobel-- and with Maria, too-- to understand the basics of how Isobel’s powers and Maria’s derivative abilities work, he’s made his feelings explicitly clear about either one of them inviting themselves into the meticulously cordoned minefield that is his brain. Instead, he’s only experienced mindwalking secondhand, through the flashes of Michael’s memory that he sees sometimes when-- Well. Not often. But on occasion. When circumstances require, or when Michael’s ungodly beautiful moans or broken-whisper dares persuade Alex’s stubbornly resistant defenses to come down long enough to let Michael to leave his mark on Alex literally, as well as figuratively.

“You should let him do it to you more often,” Mimi offers, despite the fact that Alex hasn’t actually said any of that out loud. “The handprint part, I mean. It might have saved us both some time on our Christmas Eves.” 

Before Alex can respond to _that_ , Mimi continues. “To answer your question, it’s _my_ head that we’re in; I just brought you in for a visit. I wouldn’t be able to show you what I want to show you if we were in yours.”

“And what is it you want to show me?”

Mimi lifts an eyebrow. “What do you think you need to see, George Bailey?”

Alex’s heart sinks at hearing her call him a name other than his own, and he’s about to offer the gentle corrections he’s gotten so used to (“no, Mimi, it’s Alex,” “no, Mimi, I’m gay,” “no, Mimi, he’s dead now”), when Mimi stops him with a deeply unimpressed look and he quickly remembers where he’s heard that name before. It’s not a lapse in memory; it’s a metaphor.

_It’s a Wonderful Life_. 

Alex sighs. “So you’re going to show me--”

“A world with no Manes Men,” Mimi finishes. “Told you you were a quick study.”

At Mimi’s words, the darkness that’s been trailing Alex since he saw that damned wreath hanging on his father’s memorial-- and a lot longer than that, if he’s honest with himself-- settles over him again, pushing its way back into focus after being temporarily overwhelmed by the glare of the mindspace. 

“Do you really think that’s something I need to be shown?” he asks, not bothering to hide his skepticism. Mimi knew him at sixteen; she’s heard worse. “Because I’ve already had some pretty vivid daydreams about exactly how a world without my family would look. Usually when I’m elbow deep in souvenirs from their unauthorized torture facility.”

Alex keeps his voice steady, but his chest clenches tight like a fist-- the way it always does when he thinks of all the people his family detained and dissected and experimented on against their will. Nora Truman most of all. The galaxy-crossing woman whose fearlessness and mechanical genius is the only the reason that Alex gets to know what the other pole of the cosmic force that keeps him locked in an unshakable orbit looks like, instead of spending every night scanning the stars, wondering why he was born feeling like part of him is a universe away. The woman who knew exactly what it’s like to be loved by a Manes who would die to protect you but still can’t save you from his own blood when it counts. 

Mimi crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re proving my point for me, you know. Besides which, if I didn’t think you needed to see it, do you think I’d waste my time showing it to you, when I finally have one of you kids here in the one place that _you might actually listen to me_? Or do you not think I hear you-- you and Liz and Rosa, and even my baby-- brushing it aside every time I tell you something that you can only hear sideways, out _there_. ”

It’s clear from the angry nod of Mimi’s head that by ‘out there’ she means the real world, outside her own mind. Alex blushes again, in shame this time, at the number of times he knows he’s smiled and nodded while Mimi has grown increasingly agitated, repeating phrases he can’t begin to understand.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, making himself meet her eyes. He’s gotten used to the uncomfortable task of apologizing and meaning it; he’s had to. After a moment, he adds, “That must be lonely.”

A sentiment he understands well. Except that Mimi is isolated by forces beyond her control, by capabilities the human body was never made to master. Whereas the times that Alex has found himself most alone, it’s been because he ran as far as could from anyone who wanted to be near him, and then found himself hating the distance he created.

Mimi gazes at him sadly for a long moment before she answers. “Come on. We better hurry if we’re going to finish up in time for your date.”

Alex breathes through the reminder and follows, trying not to think about how Michael Guerin must be spending his Christmas Eve in a world where he _doesn’t_ have a date with Alex Manes.

Trying to pretend that he can’t already guess the answer.

  
  
  


“So how exactly does this work, anyway?” Alex asks Mimi, as they push through the double doors into Sunset Mesa’s parking lot. 

It’s bracingly cold now that the sunset has fully set, and Alex finds himself relating to the giant inflatable penguins propped up along the driveway. He’s certain they were reindeer in his world. The _real_ world. He wonders whether a butterfly flapped its wings in Mexico and the Home Depot in this version of Roswell ran out of reindeer. Or if someone that Alex’s family executed survived long enough in this world to get to the Home Depot earlier than whoever is in charge of Sunset Mesa’s decorations, and buy the reindeer first.

Mimi hums. “I told you; we’re in my mind. I’m showing you what I see.”

Alex considers her words. “I thought you were able to see the future. Not-- whatever this is.”

“What _can_ be; what _could_ have been,” Mimi shrugs. She’s barefoot, Alex notices. But doesn’t seem to mind the cold. “They’re not that different. Not in here, anyway.” 

Alex has follow-up questions about how that could possibly be the case, but Mimi is waltzing forward, hopping off the curb and landing easily on the asphalt, first one foot then the other. Her dancer’s grace, her lack of concern for polite behavior-- more parts of the woman who was a surrogate mother that Alex let himself forget.

The wind picks up and Alex pulls his jacket tighter around him, reaching instinctively into the pocket for his keys. When his fingertips only touch fabric, Mimi rolls her eyes indulgently.

“I know you’ve seen the movie, Alex; do you need me to give you the whole speech anyway? All right, then, here goes. You have no car keys,” she sing-songs, ticking off items on her fingers as she goes. “You have no _car._ No house keys, no cell phone, no wallet, no driver’s license, no nametag, no ID badge. You were never born.”

At the mention of his badge, Alex stops short. There’s a moment of-- he doesn’t want to call it fear. A moment of adrenaline, maybe. When he remembers the scene just before the one that Mimi is paraphrasing, where the man in the movie is shocked to find that his old injury has been healed. But when Alex looks down at his legs, the prosthesis is still in place, the bottom half of his right leg still gone-- despite the fact that in this world, Alex Manes never existed, and therefore presumably never ran away from all the things he hated and the only man he loved, just to leave parts of his body lying in an even more unwelcoming desert.

“Did your visual effects budget run out?” he asks Mimi, with a pointed glance at his pant leg.

She smiles, but it looks a little sad at the edges. “My head, my show; I can pick and choose the rules here and there.”

“And you chose this?”

“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about finding yourself in a different body than the one I know you’ve worked so hard to adjust to,” Mimi answers, voice more gentle than Alex wants it to be. “If you want me to change it, just say the word.” 

Choosing whether to have full use of his leg is not a luxury Alex has been afforded before. Not when the explosion happened; not even when he floated in and out of consciousness at military hospitals afterward, while the doctors looked to his next of kin for directions on how to treat the only injury Alex has ever suffered that’s undeniably more severe than the ones that same next of kin gave him. 

“No. Thanks. This-- this is fine,” he hears himself saying, surprised at the catch in his voice. 

“A little better than fine,” Mimi says, with a fond look that suggests she’s not talking about his leg at all. It melts away with another impish grin. “The old holes from your teenage piercings are gone, though.”

Alex laughs, even as he feels a twinge of melancholy that the injury he sustained following Jesse’s wishes is more indelibly a part of him now than the marks of his earliest rebellion. He’s reaching up before he realizes he’s doing it, toward the center of his chest and the comfort he usually finds there.

“They’re not there, either,” Mimi says before he can make contact. She meets his furrowed eyebrows with a knowing look. “Your uncle Tripp’s dog tags.” 

Alex’s hand freezes inches away from his chest, and the steady weight that’s no longer hanging there. 

Of course it’s no longer hanging there. A world with _no_ Manes Men. Even the ones that did their best in the losing fight to make their family’s legacy something better than it is.

Alex thinks suddenly of Greg’s strong hugs and the patient way he talks to his students on the reservation, crouching down to their height-- nothing that they ever saw a parent do while they were growing up. He thinks of Clay, too, who Alex can only hope has been off the radar for so long because he’s broken free of Jesse’s hold, and not because he’s running another Geneva Convention violation somewhere, on Jesse’s orders. Alex even thinks of Flint, although it’s been years since they’ve been in the same space together without one of them holding a gun on the other. He hasn’t given up hope that Flint will find his way to the other side of Jesse’s indoctrination, some day, no matter how clear it is, from Michael’s clenched jaw and unasked-for bodyguard routine whenever Alex agrees to meet Flint for information at an unsecured location, that Alex is operating on stubbornness instead of logic on that front.

He finds himself a little bit grateful-- and more than a little bit guilty for it-- that this world without his family is just pictures in Mimi’s head. As much as he knows that the world, on balance, would be better if it had never known the Maneses’ brutality and paranoia, he’s still not sure he could bear to be the one to pull the trigger, if it meant a world that had never had a Tripp, or a Greg, or a Clay, or a Flint.

“I know that, honey,” Mimi says softly, once again answering a thought Alex didn’t voice out loud. “I think you’re missing a name on that list, though.” 

Alex frowns. “Jesse? Because I don’t--”

Mimi just sighs and walks ahead.

  
  
  


They’ve been hiking down the side of the highway for at least a mile when Mimi lets out a triumphant “hah!” Alex has been looking up as they walk, staring at the stars perched over the sandstone and scrub, missing the drawl that used to ramble in his ear about the distances between points on constellations that just looked like dots to Alex, who was born to live and die on this one little rock among so many others. 

He’s been trying not to wonder who the Michael in this world used to lay out here and watch the stars with, if not Alex.

Mimi’s shout brings his attention back to earth, and he follows her over to where she’s reaching for the door of an abandoned truck that looks like it’s been rusting away on the side of the road for ten years. More, probably. The door swings open too quickly, like it’s barely on its hinges. Alex thinks Mimi’s lucky the handle didn’t break off in her hand.

“You coming or not?” she calls, from where she’s situated herself in the driver’s seat. 

Alex approaches the passenger side with open mistrust. “Mimi, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there is no way that thing is going to start.” 

The grin she shoots him is an open challenge. “What-- is hotwiring a truck too analog for the big-time computer hacker? What did you even learn in the military? Or from your juvenile delinquent boyfriend for that matter?”

Alex reaches reluctantly for the passenger door, his eyes narrowing at the one spot of paint that hasn’t been scoured away by sun and sand and time. It looks like it might have been turquoise once. Or light blue. 

“My ‘juvenile delinquent boyfriend’ has alien powers at his disposal,” he grumbles as he sits in the passenger seat, resolutely ignoring how familiar this end of the bench seat feels. All trucks seem the same inside, don’t they? “Besides, this barely qualifies as a truck. It’s an antiquity. I’m surprised Old Man Sanders didn’t take it in for scrap thirty years ago.” 

Mimi looks over too quickly from where she’s been rooting around beneath the steering column. 

“Sanders doesn’t run the scrapyard in this world. Turns out with two good eyes, he’s a hell of a sharpshot. He joined up in 1960 and hasn’t been back to Roswell since.”

She doesn’t offer any more details than that-- although Alex could use them. He’d just assumed that in the world where Nora _isn’t_ taken in by Harlan’s raid on the Long Farm, Sanders and Roy and Louise would all be a part of Michael’s life, once his pod finally opened. But then, Alex reasons, without the trauma of that night, maybe Nora and Louise didn’t have the same prominence in Sanders’ life. Maybe they were just two unusual women who were nice to him when he was a kid. Not people whose children he devotes his whole long life to watching over at a gruff but concerned distance. It makes sense, in that light. 

Alex tries not to think of it in the other possible light-- as another man who matters to Michael, running off to the military and leaving him behind in the Roswell dust. 

The sound of a police siren pulls Alex from his thoughts. 

“Oh, don’t worry. That’ll just be Sheriff Valenti,” Mimi says absently, as she continues to try to hotwire a vehicle that she very clearly does not own.

The knock on the window steals Alex’s suggestion that maybe she wants to take a break until the law enforcement officer is no longer approaching them. But the face that appears in the window after the knock steals more than that.

Mimi’s right: it _is_ Sheriff Valenti. But not Michelle.

_Jim_.

He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud, until Jim frowns and asks, “Do I know you, son?” Then, with an equally blank look at Mimi, “Ma’am?”

So he doesn’t know Alex _or_ Mimi. Alex has questions about that, but before he can process them-- or the increasingly concerning fact that, however good Jim had been to Alex in Alex’s world, Alex and Mimi have still been _pulled over_ and Alex doesn't have a uniform to protect them in this world-- Jim’s eyes glaze over. He nods for a moment, like he’s listening to someone who’s not there, then blinks. He’s clear-eyed once more as he tips his hat to Mimi and Alex and says, “You two have a Merry Christmas, then,” before heading back to his car and down the road. 

Alex lets out a breath and turns to Mimi, who’s smiling at the retreating cruiser.

“Looks like someone _has_ been spending time with Aunt Isobel,” he mutters, loud enough that he knows Mimi can hear him. “And Uncle Max, too,” he adds, when the decrepit truck suddenly jumps to humming life under her outstretched palm.

She shrugs. “Like I said. My head, my show.”

  
  
  


Alex turns over the interaction with Jim over in his mind as Mimi drives them smoothly down the highway. He wonders, as he watches her lean out the open window, in spite of the cold, how long it’s been since she’s been able to drive a car outside the confines of her own mind. She always loved driving with the windows down, he remembers.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she says after another mile marker flies by. The lights of town are just becoming visible on the horizon. 

_Jim didn’t know me_ , he almost says. 

It’s a silly thing to focus on; he realizes that. The Jim of this world couldn’t possibly know a person who never existed in this world, after all. That didn’t make it less unnerving to look at someone who cared enough in Alex’s world to rewrite his damn will for Alex, and see no recognition at all. 

It makes Alex wonder how much harder it would be to look at someone who cared a hell of a lot more than that, in Alex’s world, and see nothing at all. Especially someone who promised to never look away. It had been bad enough all those months with Maria, having those livewire amber eyes on him and seeing only anger. Or exhaustion. Or disgust. Or--

Alex breathes out.

Everything about Mimi’s posture choreographs that she’s still expecting an answer, regardless of how much of Alex’s energy is preoccupied with wrangling his relentless self-recrimination. Alex _really_ doesn’t know how he managed to forget how much more she’s always been about demanding answers than giving them. He shifts in the seat, letting his fingers drift over a door handle that he could swear he’s touched before.

“Jim’s alive in this world,” he says, stating the obvious, instead of what he’d actually been thinking.

Mimi hums. “And why do you think that is?”

Alex _knows_ why it is. Jim Valenti was the kind of man who did biathlons into his fifties; he would still be hale and hearty in Alex’s world, too, if there had been no Jesse around to commit homicide-by-alien. There _is_ no Jesse in this world. Hence, no brain tumor for Jim.

Alex doesn’t feel like recounting all of that, though. 

“Kyle must be so happy,” he says, in lieu of an answer to Mimi’s question.

“Well. Yes and no.”

The equivocal response is a surprise. Jim had been Kyle’s hero; the only true blackmark on his character, as far as Alex knows, was his involvement with Project Shepherd, and. Well. That wouldn’t be a concern in a world where no one founded Project Shepherd, would it?

The surprise must show on Alex’s face. Either that or Mimi’s reading his mind again, because she shrugs and offers a rueful smile. “This Kyle doesn’t know the alternative. As it is, he lives on the other side of the country and hasn’t been home since Jim came clean a few years back about Rosa being his daughter.”

Alex straightens in his seat. “Rosa. She’s--”

“Alive, oh yes,” Mimi says, with a chuckle. “She’s . . . still trying to figure out who she is, in a lot of ways. Getting clean helped. Getting her diagnosis, too. But there are still some things she’s working through.” Mimi cuts a side-long glance before adding, “I understand she’s been dating a guy named Chad for the last month or two.”

“Oh,” Alex manages. The-- well-earned-- Deluca policy against Chads aside, Alex had always gotten the sense growing up that Rosa’s romantic interests were . . . closer to his own, as it were. Or. The exact opposite of his own, depending on how you look at it. 

Mimi laughs bright and loud. “Oh, I don't think you're wrong. I think she’s just . . . walking a little slower towards realizing it, in this world. Or towards accepting it, maybe.” 

Alex frowns. “I didn’t think Rosa did anything slowly.”

“It’s funny the effect that little changes here and there can have.” 

Alex could almost believe Mimi’s words were a nonsequitur, if it weren’t for the knowing curl of her mouth as she continues.

“A missed connection here, a different focus there.” Mimi’s fingers rap lightly against the steering wheel, before she adds, quieter, “Not growing up watching your little sister’s friend live out his truth, in spite of what it cost him.” 

It takes longer than it probably should for Alex to realize what Mimi’s implying. He chalks it up to the sheer improbability of what she’s suggesting. 

His ugly snort doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Something funny?”

“Yeah,” he fires back readily. “The idea that _I_ could be anyone’s gay yoda.” 

“You are a little tall for the part.”

That’s not the part that Alex was objecting to, and Mimi knows it. He doesn’t hesitate to let the lift of his eyebrow communicate that fact.

“I may have come out when I was a kid, but I am still just _barely_ outside the closet door,” he says, as he tries to ignore the greatest-hits reel that his brain is treating him to, of every time he pulled away from Michael, or said nothing when some jackass on base made a brilliant quip about taking it up the ass, or pretended to _ignore_ Michael, or shied away from Forrest’s kiss, or broke Michael’s heart because he’s still so damn afraid of his father that, even a year after the man is dead and buried, it still takes herculean effort for Alex to put his arms around the man he loves in public.

“You’re a private person,” Mimi murmurs softly, as Alex concentrates on his breathing. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Especially considering what happened the first time you--”

“We really don’t need to do this.” 

Alex isn’t sure he’s ever interrupted a line of conversation so quickly. He’s also not sure there’s ever been one he wanted to discuss less. Even knowing what he knows now-- that it wasn’t _just_ Jesse in the shed that night that turned the idealistic boy Alex loved into the angry cowboy that he still loves but also aches for-- Alex will never forget the lesson that seeped deep into his bones for a decade after, that just touching Alex had been enough to darken the brightest person Alex knew.

At least the Michael of this world would never have gone into that damn toolshed. At least that damn toolshed would never have been built.

Mimi watches him uneasily, even as she carefully maneuvers the truck into Roswell city limits. It’s clear that she wants to say more, but she’s willing to let it go. Or she almost is.

“I’m just saying, you have more effect on the people around you than you may know.” 

Before Alex can disagree, she cracks another smile, her voice going coy and amused. “Take Kyle Valenti, for instance,” she says, leadingly.

Alex takes the bait. “What about Kyle?”

“Well. I can sense that he’s still mostly a dick in this world.” 

Alex scoffs. “He’s almost thirty years old. I’m sure he’s managed to grow out of his nightmare high-school persona by now. He’s-- he is a good man, once he remembers how to be one.”

“He is,” Mimi agrees easily. “He’s just another one that’s walking a little slower in this world. It’s not always easy to realize the consequences of your actions, without seeing how they impact someone you care about. Especially when that someone doesn’t mince words about-- what was it you called him at the rehearsal before your high school graduation?-- what an ‘overcompensating douchenozzle’ you’ve become.”

Alex can’t help the laugh that startles out of him at the memory, although at the time he’d spit those words in Kyle’s face-- and gotten decked for his troubles-- he’d been rightly furious. 

“He’s still a good son in this world, at least,” Mimi continues. “Michelle’s spending Christmas in Manhattan with him and his model-girlfriend of the month. He’s taken her to see the tree in Rockefeller Center every year, since the news about Jim and Helena came out.”

Alex is already rolling his eyes at Kyle’s predictably cliche life as a big-city surgeon rather than a (relatively) humble hometown doctor, when he digests what Mimi’s not saying. “So, Michelle-- doesn’t spend Christmas with Jim, then?”

Mimi doesn’t answer directly; she doesn’t need to. “For what it’s worth, I think they’ll work it out eventually. But you have to remember that Helena was Michelle’s friend once.” 

Mimi very carefully keeps her eyes on the windshield when she adds, “A betrayal like that can be a hard thing to get over.” 

Alex’s shoulders bunch up around his ears. His fingers curls into the tattered and threadbare upholstery of the bench seat.

“I’m sure it would be,” he says just as carefully. “For someone like Michelle.”

_For someone who hadn’t already pushed the man he loved away_ , he doesn’t say. He gets distracted by the fact that they’re passing the Wild Pony’s lot. He doesn’t suppose it’s worth pretending that the timing is accidental on Mimi’s part. 

Her head, her show, after all.

“Do you want to stop in and take a look?” she asks, with meekness that neither of them believe.

The lights are out, Alex notices. The whole lot is so dark that he can’t even see the sign out front. There’s not a single car parked there.

Not a single airstream, either. But that doesn’t prove anything. Who knows where Michael might live in this world? Where his girlfriend might join him, if she was actually able to close the bar and take a night off on Christmas Eve.

Alex can’t quite get any words out. Or, he _could_ , probably. But he doesn’t trust how they’d sound. 

He shakes his head, silent, instead.

Mimi gives him another of her long, sad looks before the light changes and she accelerates onward. 

“Maybe that’s for the best,” she tells him.

  
  
  


The town’s main drag looks more or less like Alex remembers it. The Evanses’ Christmas decorations are still the neatest on any block, although there are no cars out front tonight. Mimi tells him that it’s because Ann Evans hosts her annual Christmas party on December _twenty-third_ in this world, instead of on Christmas Eve. Tonight they’ll be celebrating with just Max and Isobel, Mimi says with authority. Spoiling them rotten with more gifts than they know what to do with. 

They pass the police station, and then the UFO Emporium.

“June Diaz,” Mimi says out of nowhere, while Alex stares at the window. The museum’s old facade doesn’t look like it was remodeled in this world, he notices; maybe the lack of ongoing covert alien-hunting operations gave the Greens less material to work with. The ticket counter looks just the same as it did when Alex worked there in high school. 

His fingertips press against its image on the truck’s window before he can stop them. Mimi smirks and he pulls his hand back to his lap.

“Sorry, what was that?” Alex asks Mimi, disentangling himself from the memories of a shy smile pressed against his own.

Mimi just shakes her head. “ _June Diaz._ She was your year in school. She played trombone, I think? Or maybe it was French horn.” 

Alex nods; it _was_ French horn. “What about her?”

“Green hired her to work the ticket counter at the museum, since you obviously weren’t around to apply.” Mimi smiles at him softly. “I don’t think the place meant as much to her, in the long run, as it did to you.”

Alex is saved from finding a response by the sight of the Crashdown with all its windows dark. 

“What happened to the diner?” he asks in dismay, craning in his seat to watch it as they pass.

“Still going strong,” Mimi answers as she accelerates. “Just closed for the holiday.”

That’s a shock in itself. Arturo always stays open late on Christmas Eve. For the sake of all the people who don’t have anywhere else to go, Alex has always suspected-- having spent at least one Christmas Eve eating fries by himself in the booth he now knows was Tripp’s favorite. Or, that _had_ been Tripp’s favorite. In a world where Tripp existed.

“Arturo doesn’t run the Crashdown anymore,” Mimi explains, answering his unspoken question again. “Liz is making money hand-over-foot with a big research firm right here in Roswell and she convinced him to retire and move in full-time with her and her husband. I think Arturo agreed because he thinks being their full-time house-boy will get him grandkids faster.”

It warms Alex to think that the Liz in this world has been able to hold onto the professional success that keeps getting wrenched away from Alex’s Liz, despite her undeniable brilliance. He has to admit it surprises him to learn that she’s found it in _Roswell_ , though, which has never exactly been a biomedical hub. More of a company town, where the only two companies are kitsch-tourism and--

Oh.

“Mm-hm,” Mimi confirms. “She’s working on a big military contract.” 

That _more_ than surprises Alex. But maybe there’s a connection between that opportunity and the lack of Maneses in this Roswell. Without the local base’s money being back-channeled into secret prisons and anti-alien dirty bombs, maybe there’s been a push for improving medical technology, instead. Tissue regeneration-- isn’t that Liz’s specialty? That kind of science could have all sorts of application to service injuries, and who knows what else.

Alex asks Mimi as much, but Mimi demurs. “Let’s just say there was an opportunity she couldn’t turn down. Something no one else in the world has.”

That makes sense, Alex supposes. Liz has always wanted to be on the cutting edge. Hopefully it’s not on the cutting edge of bioweaponry, or something like that. But either way, it’s her career and her choice; it’s not as if Alex has room to judge. It’s just nice that her work is getting support in this world. And that it’s apparently not putting a rift between her and her partner in this world, either. Speaking of which--

“Is it Max?” 

The question is barely out of Alex’s mouth when the truck jerks sharply across the center line, Mimi’s eyes wide and panicked.

“Whoa!” Alex calls out, reaching over to help steady the wheel and guide them back into their lane. “What the hell was that?”

Mimi looks flustered for the first time all night, her fingers clenching and unclenching against the mostly worn-away leather covering on the wheel. “Sorry about that,” she says, her voice pitched a little too high. “I think you may have been right about this truck being an antique; the steering’s all but shot.” 

The attempt at casual doesn’t fool Alex for a second, but he’s willing to let the moment slide. For now. Especially since Mimi’s eyes are back to their normal size.

“What was it you wanted to know?” she asks, the easy tone already sounding a little less forced. “Something about Max?”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “I was wondering if it was him-- the husband that you said Liz and Arturo live with in this world.”

“Oh. No. It’s someone else.”

Alex raises his eyebrow. “Anyone I’d know?”

“Just someone she met in grad school,” Mimi answers. “Liz likes him well enough.”

Alex can’t help but think that ‘well enough’ is pretty much a death sentence, when it comes to Liz’s emotions. Especially when he considers the fire in her eyes every time she squares off against Max in Alex’s world, a full foot shorter but never giving an inch. Or, in happier times, the way she melts against Max when Max cranes his neck down to kiss her. Or the way her determination to save Max after everything that happened with Noah and Rosa was so absolute that she’d strong-armed Alex into commandeering an entire military facility, just so that she would have the space and equipment she needed to bring Max back from the--

Alex’s stomach drops. “Oh, God-- Max. He’s not-- In this world. He’s not . . .”

He can’t bring himself to finish the question. Whether that’s because he refuses to believe that Alex’s decidedly mundane contribution to Team Resurrection could possibly have had that much of an impact, or because he doesn’t want to think that, in any world, Alex’s failure left Michael without his brother, he’s not sure.

“Let’s just . . . keep driving,” Mimi says. 

Alex doesn’t object.

  
  
  


That doesn’t mean he stops _thinking_ about it, though. 

Mimi drives them all the way through town and back out into open desert. Alex keeps his eyes peeled for the house on the very edge of city limits, where the Max in Alex's world lives. He doesn’t see any lights as they pass. But that’s not surprising. Because Mimi already told him: Max and Isobel are spending Christmas Eve at the Evans house, getting showered in presents. 

Max can’t be _dead_ , if he’s celebrating with his parents. 

Although that fact in itself raises questions. Because why were Max and Isobel adopted by the Evans family in the first place, in a world where Alex’s grandfather didn’t capture Nora and force Louise into hiding? Maybe Louise and Nora were still gone by the time the pods opened-- passed away peacefully in their sleep from old age. That’s more or less what happened to Louise in Alex’s world, after all, even though she had the best care possible from Tripp’s friends on the reservation.

The reservation.

Alex turns to Mimi suddenly. “Where is my mom? In this world. What happens to her here?” 

_Who would she be if she never got stuck being married to my father?_ Is what he actually means. 

Mimi seems to recognize that. He’s not sure why she chooses to answer _this_ question directly, when she avoided his questions about Max. Maybe she would have actually answered him about Max, too, he’s forced to consider. If he had actually pushed the issue. If he wasn’t so damn anxious that learning more about Max would inevitably mean learning more about _Michael_. And finally gaining unassailable proof that, whatever Michael’s heart may tell him now, his life would be easier _without_ Alex’s baggage on his shoulders.

“Mindy is . . . okay,” Mimi answers, bringing Alex back to the present. “She ended up out in Utah. She never seems to pick men who treat her right, but then--” Mimi’s voice dips knowingly, “-- we accept the love we think we deserve, don’t we? Like mother like son, I guess.”

Alex doesn’t choose to dignify that with a response. Because he-- He has been accepting Michael’s-- Love. Michael’s love. For _him_. For months now. He doesn’t understand it; he doesn’t even agree with it. But he’s not running from it anymore; he’s returning it-- in person this time, not just in his wasted heart, half a world away. He’s _accepting_ it. And God knows, he doesn’t even _almost_ deserve Michael.

“Well, whoever she picked in this world can’t be worse than my dad,” Alex says, focusing on the first part of Mimi’s answer, and ignoring the latter. He tilts his head consideringly. “I’m not sure that would even be possible. I hope it’s not.”

Mimi is still shooting him concerned glances out of the corner of her eye, but she accepts the deflection. “No, you’re probably right-- you can’t do worse than Jesse.”

A few more seconds tick by in silence.

“I feel like there’s something else you want to ask me,” Mimi says. “Either that or you’re doing a great impression of balloon about to burst.”

Alex fidgets uncomfortably in the seat. He wants to believe that it’s because his leg is killing him. Or because he can practically _see_ Michael’s little alien bobblehead on the dashboard of this rusted-out truck that can’t possibly be the one that Alex spent some of the best nights of his life in-- the only _happy_ nights he can remember, during that last year living under Jesse’s thumb. But that’s not why he’s having such a hard time keeping his inhalations steady right now, and he knows it.

“Does-- does she have kids in this world?” he finally manages to ask, keeping his voice carefully even. And then, with still greater effort: “Does she stay with them?”

At first he thinks that Mimi isn’t going to answer him. But then he realizes that she’s not ignoring him; she’s pulling the truck onto the mostly empty highway’s dusty shoulder. There’s no key in the ignition, so she stops the motor with another press of her palm against the dash. When the vibrations stop, the whole hulking shell of the old truck seems to shudder and give up, sinking lower down onto the weathered asphalt below. 

Mimi turns to Alex slowly, reaching for his hands, which are gripping white-knuckle at the fraying upholstery. He unclenches and lets her take them. Reluctantly.

“Sweetheart,” she finally says. Which cements any lingering doubt that Alex is about to receive more kindness than he-- Than he can bear. “You know that it wasn’t anything you did, or your brothers did, that made Mindy go. Or made her go without taking you with her.”

“I know that,” Alex snaps.

“Do you, really? Because I think your old guitar was strung less tightly than you are right now.”

Alex snatches his hands back, pressing them palms down against his jeans. “She had to leave him. I _know_ that. He was a _monster._ And I know that she didn’t _want_ to leave us, either, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Alex tells himself to stop his answer there. But for once, his lungs don’t seem to be obeying him. There’s an agitation in his chest, his hands, his whole body, that he can only seem to dispel if he keeps talking.

“He would have made her life hell if she’d tried to take us with her,” Alex tells Mimi, reciting the explanations he’s made in his own head more times than he can count. “Not that he actually wanted us. As anything more than little soldiers to move around on his map, that is. She _had_ to get away. To escape. I don’t-- I will _never_ blame her for that.”

Alex’s chest feels like it’s heaving once he spits the last word out. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s out of breath, or because of how many breaths-- screams, even-- he’s _still_ managing to keep locked away inside of him.

Mimi meets his tirade with nothing but a single, audible sniff.

Alex feels his eyes narrow. “What the hell was that?”

“What was what?” 

“You _know_ what,” he insists. “Do you disagree? Do you think I _should_ blame her for getting out?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Then what? What, Mimi? What is with the-- the judgment!”

Mimi leans forward across the seat, until she’s staring Alex down. The lost, half-here look he’s come to associate with her over the past few years is a distant memory right now.

“I’m just wondering,” she says, voice pitched low and dangerous, “why you refuse to extend _yourself_ the same compassion.” 

Alex can’t pretend to misunderstand her point. As much as he’d like to. His breathing suddenly isn’t the problem anymore; he can’t hear it over his heartbeat.

“That was different.” 

Mimi sniffs again, louder. And swear to God, if Alex didn’t love her like a mother--

“It _was_.” 

“How?” she asks. She pulls back and away-- far enough to lean against the driver’s side door-- but the intensity in her stare doesn’t dim. “You said it yourself, honey; your father was a monster. You had to get away from him, just like she did. You both left people that you loved, that you regretted leaving, to be free from him.”

Alex shuts his eyes as tight as he can. He can _not_ hear this. Not here. Not tonight. 

“Right. Except _Mom_ didn’t leave to go become exactly what Dad always hoped she’d become,” he grits out, before opening his eyes and meeting Mimi’s knowing, unblinking stare. “Eighteen years he spent beating the crap out of me to try to make me into what he wanted me to be. And what do I do? Sign up to be the perfect little airman, just like he always wanted. Not exactly a moment of heroism.”

“Ben Giannotta might disagree with you.”

Alex can feel the skin of his forehead crease. “Who’s Ben Giannotta?”

Mimi doesn’t even blink. “His wife Carly liked to watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ at Christmas. She showed it to you one year when you were both deployed. I bet they’re watching it together tonight, in your world. But not here. Here, Carly’s dead because _you_ weren’t there to pull her to safety when that convoy exploded-- and lose your own leg in the process.”

Alex’s eyes drop to his lap. _Giannotta._ Of course. Light brown hair, thick New Jersey accent. Always talking about her husband and sharing pictures of her cat. Once told a senior airman to ‘shut the hell up, _sir_ ,’ when he started talking out of his ass about whether transgender people should serve. Alex hasn’t forgotten her.

“Her parents would probably take Ben’s side,” Mimi continues. “Her older sister, too. And her niece and nephew, and the cat that she and Ben adopted. And all the families and friends and lovers of the other people you served with, who are still alive today because you have enough bravery for three people and barely enough survival instinct for a fly.”

Alex shakes his head, because the truth is, most days he feels like there’s nothing inside him _but_ survival instinct. 

“And how many people on the other side of the world will never see _their_ loved ones again _because_ of things I did?” He shrugs his shoulders-- not because he doesn’t care, but because he’s already accepted this aspect of his service. “I’m glad that I was able to get my team home alive; I won’t pretend otherwise. But it was _war_ , Mimi. It doesn’t all break in one column.”

There’s real frustration in Mimi’s sigh, when she shakes her head and says, “Oh, Alex. It’s not a _balance sheet_.”

“Isn’t it?” He throws his hands up, lets them fall back to the seat beside him. “Isn’t that the whole point? To try to make sure that the good we do outweighs the bad? What-- what use am I, otherwise? What is the point of me being here?” 

Mimi’s expression shutters the second the words leave Alex’s mouth.

Alex knows, in his gut, that he’s made an error here, even if he’s not sure just what that error is yet. It’s too familiar a feeling not to recognize.

He reaches tentatively for Mimi, not sure what comfort he can offer; he’s never been the person people go to for hugs and reassurances. But as soon as he reaches out, Mimi escapes out the driver’s side door, not bothering to shut it behind her. Just leaving it to swing brokenly on its rusted hinges. She storms around the truck to the front of the hood, where she stands illuminated by the headlights that never switched off when she telekinetically cut the engine. 

She stays there, frozen and angry and-- _sad_ , too. Staring at Alex through the windshield, until her hands suddenly slam down on the hood hard enough to bounce the truck on its long-dead shock absorbers. The movement seems to take the energy out of her; as soon as her palms touch metal, her head tips forward, and her eyes squeeze shut.

Alex wakes up from the shocked stillness that seized him while Mimi stood in judgment in front of the headlights. He scrambles out the passenger door, approaching with one arm stretched in front of him, like she’s a wild animal that might startle and run. 

“Mimi--” he begins, not sure where he’ll end. But she looks up at him before he has a chance to find out, her eyes wet with tears. 

Alex’s heart catches in his throat.

“You want to know what’s the point of _you_ , Alex?” she says, incredulous. Spitting out each word like it’s bitter on the tongue. “What’s the point of _me_! If you’re right, then tell me-- what the hell is the point of someone like me?”

“ _Mimi_ ,” he tries again, horrified. He can feel the regret clogging his throat. 

Mimi shakes her head, spinning around so that she can sit on the hood, her eyes scanning the stars that are so far beyond both of their heads. 

“I see _so much_ , Alex. So much. And I don’t understand half of it. And I can’t tell _you_ kids even half of _that._ ” She pulls her white sweater tighter against the cold. Alex must have adjusted to the strange colors inside the mindspace somewhere on their journey across their imagined hometown; it barely hurts his eyes to look at it anymore. 

“You’re my kids-- all of you, not just Maria,” Mimi continues. “And I want to help you; _God,_ do I want to help you. But most days out there, I don’t even know my own name. So there’s not a hell of a lot of good works on my balance sheet these days, either. If that’s all that any of us count for.”

Alex looks up at the stars as he tries to absorb Mimi’s words. As he makes himself see his own role in the anguish she’s feeling right now. 

As much as he hated growing up in this godforsaken desert, the sight of uncountable stars stretching out over the bluffs and dunes and mesas has always been one that makes it easier for him to breathe. Maybe because the sight helps him to remember a time when he was young enough, _free_ enough to still believe that he could shake free his family’s legacy and run _with_ someone, instead of just away, and it would be all be that easy. 

It works again now. 

He lets out a long breath before sitting down on the edge of the car beside Mimi, followed by another steady breath in. He doesn’t put his arm around her, but he lets their shoulders touch.

“Maria loves you so much, you know?” he says, pitching his words to Mimi, even as he keeps his eyes upward, scanning for Michael’s favorite constellations. “I have no idea what it’s like to have uncomplicated positive emotions about a parent. But she does. And it doesn’t matter to her if you’re clear as a bell or if you’re saying things that none of the rest of us understand. You make her happy just by being around. You make _all_ of us happier just by being around.” 

He doesn’t flinch away when Mimi’s hand comes up to rest on his cheek, mothering him in a way that no one else has done since he was five years old. He gives himself one more exhale before he stops searching for Orion, and brings his gaze back down to earth.

“So _I’m_ allowed to be more than the things I can do for other people,” Mimi says when he does, her voice as steely as the fingers against his chin, “but you aren’t?”

Alex sighs. The question isn’t exactly unexpected. Or it shouldn’t be, anyway.

That doesn’t make it any easier to answer. 

“I’m not like you,” he finally settles on. “It’s just-- different.” 

“So you keep saying,” Mimi says, letting her hand drop to his shoulder and squeeze. “What _makes_ it different? The people you come from? Because you are not responsible for your father’s actions, Alex. Not your brothers’ or your grandfather’s, either.”

“Shouldn’t someone be?” Alex drops his gaze to the chipped baby blue paint on the dented hood below him, picking at it with another sigh. “My family has done so much that’s just-- evil. Plain and simple. I try to fix what I can. But there’s just _so_ much, Mimi. It’s one damn thing after another, and it never stops. Every time I pull one thread there’s five more to unravel.”

“And you may never be able to get through them all,” Mimi says, clear-eyed and honest. “But you’re still trying. That’s more than a lot of people would do.”

“It’s not _enough_.” 

Mimi frowns at the pronouncement. At Alex’s swift and unflinching judgment. But there’s no way for him to deny it, or to pretend otherwise. It’s the truest thing he knows, except for the fact that he loves Michael Guerin with every fiber of his damaged-goods heart, and always will, no matter how much better Michael deserves.

“Not enough for everyone?” Mimi asks, reading his mind again. “Or not enough for _him_?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? Except it’s not much of a question at all.

Alex lifts his eyes to the sky, hoping to find some peace up there again-- just enough that he can coax his lungs into helping him out here. But it’s a mistake. Because the stars, for Alex, aren’t just peace. They’re _Michael._ No matter what continent he’s standing on or what constellations he sees, they’re always, _always_ Michael. 

Michael at 18, who looked at Alex the same way he looked at the comets they used to lay out all night searching for. 

Michael at 28, who looked at Alex like the black hole there to swallow any light Michael managed to scrape together for himself. 

Michael at whatever age he’ll be when he finally figures out how to leave this planet and all the things Alex’s family did to him behind. All the things Alex can never make up to him.

Alex feels tears pricking behind his eyes. It’s terrifying, exposing a weakness like this. Alex has, in his lifetime, dry-swallowed thousand of words that were probably worth saying, all to keep people from seeing how soft and vulnerable he truly is, beneath the military bearing he’s adopted to keep himself _safe_. But there’s nothing he can do to preserve the illusion now, no amount of discipline that will stop the tears from forming. Nothing he can do but feel his eyebrows draw in and his mouth twist down, hoping that will be enough to at least stop them from falling.

“My family has done-- unforgivable things to him,” he confesses, teeth biting into his lip part-way through. “And I haven’t made his life any easier, either.”

“He hasn’t exactly been all sunshine and roses to you, either,” Mimi answers pointedly. “Or so my daughter tells me.”

Alex colors. “I understand why she and-- Why Michael would choose her. Someone who hadn’t hurt him like my family has. Like _I_ have. I didn’t _like_ it, but-- I understood. Honestly, I understood it a lot more than I understand why he changed his mind. Why he thinks it’s worth all the-- the crap and the pain and the history, being with me now.”

Mimi nods slowly, absorbing Alex’s words. “Is that why you’ve been trying so hard not to ask me what happens to him in this world?”

At Alex’s embarrassed wince, she lets out a fond sigh. “Oh, honey. Did you think I didn’t know? You were not-asking so loudly you might as well have been screaming.”

Alex offers a self-deprecating smile. Even he can feel how thin it is. How brittle.

“It’s one thing to _know_ that Michael would be better off with someone else. It’s another thing to actually _see_ it.” 

Mimi says nothing for a long time. Long enough that Alex leans closer to check if she’s okay. Her eyes are fixed on the horizon.

“Mimi?” Alex prompts, bumping his shoulder against hers carefully.

“You’re right that you won’t like seeing him here, in this world,” Mimi finally says. “But not for the reasons you think.”

Alex’s brow furrows, but before he can ask what she means, Mimi stands up from the hood and begins to march across the empty desert. Alex follows her as quickly as he can, cursing the clumsiness of his prosthetic over uneven terrain in the dark. Mimi stops suddenly just before a ridge where the topography drops off. Alex is still a few paces behind her, and she turns to look at him over her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” she says. “This is the part where the movie gets dark.” 

Alex hobbles toward her, frowning, until he’s standing close enough to see what’s on the other side of the ridge where she’s standing.

It’s not empty desert, like he expected. And it’s not unfamiliar, either. Alex has seen that menacing concrete compound before. Just like he’s seen that barbed wire and the flood lights and the guard tower. It’s _believing_ what he’s seeing that he’s having a harder time with.

Because this is a world without the Manes Men.

And yet somehow Alex is looking at Caulfield Prison.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


III.

“How the hell is this possible?” Alex hisses, as he picks his way down the side of the ridge, gritting his teeth against a snarl as he almost loses his footing. _Again_.

They must make quite a sight to the sniper that Alex has already clocked in the guard tower: Mimi practically glowing in head-to-toe white as she all but floats in her bare feet over the rocky slope, while Alex can barely keep himself upright behind her. He has some questions as to why the sniper isn’t choosing to _do_ anything about their uninvited presence yet. But frankly that’s not his biggest question.

“Mimi!” he demands-- fruitlessly, again. “Would you please answer me, goddamnit?! Why is this place still here, if my family wasn’t around to build it?”

He’s not really expecting an answer at this point, after being stonewalled the whole way down the ridge. Maybe that’s why he’s surprised when, once they’re both on level ground, Mimi whips around to face him, wearing the expression he remembers from the nights in high school when he and Maria would try, unsuccessfully, to sneak back in through the Delucas’ window unnoticed, after breaking curfew to chase some band that Rosa said they had to drive all the way to Albuquerque to see.

“Oh, Alex, please,” she says, more disappointed than angry. “We’ve already established that you’re no one’s fool. Why do you _think_ it’s here?”

Alex just stares at her, the words sticking in his throat. He _feels_ like a fool right now. Because he’s spent years of his life making sure no one could get the drop on him, and yet _nowhere_ , in his most paranoid imaginings of what Mimi’s visions might show him tonight, did he imagine that he would be back _here_. Staring helplessly at literally concrete proof that people will never fail to disappoint the ragged scraps of hope that Alex keeps stitching together to keep himself sane.

Mimi lets out a slow, sad sigh.

“Your father and grandfather were bad men, Alex,” she says softly. “No one’s denying that. But you can’t believe that they were the _only_ men that would look at a group of people whose ways they don’t understand and see a threat to be eliminated.”

_No_ , Alex supposes, with a swallow so tight it makes his jaw creak. With what he’s seen of the world, he really can’t believe that. Anymore.

“The military still sent a team to the crash site in ‘47,” Mimi continues. “Just like in your world. The only difference is that Harlan and Tripp weren’t with them. Harlan not being there didn’t change all that much; you give a little bit of power to any ten men and there will always be _someone_ who likes using it too much. But _Tripp_ . . .”

She trails off, eyes expectant, like she’s willing Alex to understand. 

And suddenly Alex does. Understand. The pieces fall together in his head, unforgiving and so hard he wishes he _didn’t_. But he promised himself, when he opened that very first Caulfield file and nearly gagged, that he would make himself look squarely at everything his family has done. 

And that, apparently, has to include-- _this_. The moments of _actual_ heroism in their sordid history. The moments where they didn’t exclusively make things worse. 

“Tripp’s journal,” he starts, then stops, waiting for a ‘no, you’re on the wrong track,’ from Mimi. 

It doesn’t come.

“Tripp’s journal said that _he_ was the one who found Nora and Louise that night,” Alex continues. “He let them get away. It-- it bought them enough time to make it to Roy’s farmhouse.”

Mimi smiles like he’s given the right answer, but it’s bittersweet. 

“I could feel that you were confused earlier, about why Walt Sanders would move away from Roswell and leave Nora and Louise behind. Here’s why, honey. Walt never _met_ Nora and Louise in this world. They got rounded up in ‘47 like all the others. They never made it to Roy’s place. Never got any time on this planet to meet playful little boys, or hear music, or taste ice cream, or fall in love. This _devil_ place--” she glances over her shoulder at Caulfield, just for a moment, like it hurts to look too long, “-- this is all they know of Earth.”

Alex finds himself reaching for the missing dog tags around his neck again. But there’s no comfort to be found, in this world. Just an empty space, where there used to be a reminder that even a love that’s too short and tragic and framed by horror on every side can still be cosmic.

That’s a hard enough pill to swallow. But then Alex remembers that Nora and Tripp weren’t the only love story that started the night of Nora and Louise’s escape. If Louise had never escaped to the Long Form, never met Roy, or fallen in love with him, then--

“You’re not the only one who was never born in this world,” Mimi interrupts, finishing the thought for Alex. She lifts one shoulder, and Alex thinks about the room in Sunset Mesa where they started this journey. The way it was devoid of Mimi’s photographs and jewelry and the gifts she’d been given by--

“No,” Mimi says carefully, at the same time Alex remembers the Wild Pony in this world-- empty and so dark there wasn’t even a sign out front. “There’s no Maria, either.”

The words hang between them for a second. _Just_ a second. And then Alex is pushing them away again.

None of this is real, he tells himself. Abruptly. _Viciously._ He can’t lose sight of that. He has to make himself believe it. Because the alternative is standing here, fifty feet from an armed guard tower at the site of one of his deepest regrets, on Christmas Eve, thinking about the fact that someone who was one of his closest friends once upon a time doesn’t exist in this world. And that Alex was too busy dreading the possibility that she might be curled up and cosy with his-- with Michael, to realize that.

“None of this makes sense,” he snaps, taking a step back. Distancing himself, physically and mentally, from the scene in front of him. “Even assuming that Project Shepherd would happen without Harlan there to start it--”

“They call it Project Keeper here,” Mimi corrects, without enthusiasm. “And no, I don’t know who picked that.”

Alex barely manages to restrain an eyeroll. Doesn’t manage to restrain a glare. “ _Fine_. Project _Keeper_ , then. You’re telling me that in the seventy years since the crash, not one person in this world pointed out that _this_ \-- keeping refugees as involuntary test subjects-- is _wrong_?”

“Of course they did,” Mimi fires back. “But it takes more than an objection to shut something like this down. _You_ know that better than anyone.” 

Her eyebrow arcs up when she says the last part, like she’s challenging him. Daring him.

To see something.

Alex stomach drops.

“No,” he says firmly. “Just-- no.”

But Mimi only crosses her arms over her chest, no part of her backing down.

“ _No_ ,” he repeats. “I refuse to believe that-- that the only way that all of _this_ gets shut down is if-- If--”

“If you’re there to do it?” Mimi supplies, arms still crossed tight. “A man who has a high enough clearance to know what’s really happening, and the skills to find out the parts that he _doesn’t_ have clearance to know? Who’s close enough to the men at the center that he knows their secrets and can get through their defenses? Who knows what it takes to win a war, but who’s still good enough in his heart to know right from wrong? Who’s brave and _angry_ enough to risk his life and his career taking the operation down, and smart enough to actually do it? And-- the cherry on top-- who just happens to love one of the people in the crossfire with so much of his soul that he will never give up trying to cut off all the hydra’s heads, even when it’s breaking his heart?”

Mimi lets out a deep sigh when she reaches the end of her litany, her arms dropping back to her sides. 

Alex stays motionless.

“I don’t know if you’re the _only_ person who could take down Project Shepherd,” Mimi continues, her voice softer and so much more tired than it was a moment before. “But I do know this: there are damn few people who could stand up in your shoes, Alex Manes. And you can read as many meanings in to that as you want.”

The onslaught is more than Alex can take, here of all places. Where the sloppy job he made of going after those hydra heads in his world cost Michael’s mother-- and so many others-- their lives. The one consolation he’d had after that gruesome day was the knowledge that at least this house of horrors was a pile of rubble after he and Michael and Kyle were done with it. But here it stands again, lit up like a perverse Christmas tree.

Alex buries his face in his hands. “This is a fucking nightmare.”

Mimi’s answer, low and unhappy, drifts into his darkness. 

“Oh, honey. The nightmare is just starting.”

  
  
  


Mimi leads him inside the fenced perimeter after that, and Alex is numb enough to follow. No one-- including the sniper in the tower and the armed guards by the door-- give them a second glance as they slip into the building, which Alex is chalking up to Mimi’s power to do whatever the hell she wants in her own mindspace. The instinct to move unseen is still hard to kick, though, and Alex finds himself flattening his body against the wall to get a look inside what’s clearly the guard station. 

From his spot, he watches the two men inside joke around as they listen to Christmas music on the radio station, even as the wall of video monitors behind them cycle through images of defenseless, emaciated people trapped in cages. It’s a struggle not to break something. Preferably bones.

“There’s something to say here about the banality of evil, but I’m not sure I have the stomach for it.”

Mimi’s voice, as disgusted as Alex feels, drifts from just past his shoulder. She’s not making an effort to talk quietly, but the guards inside don’t pay any mind. Another win for mindspace magic. 

“Come on,” Mimi says more quietly, as she touches his shoulder lightly and then heads down the hallway. “Still a little bit more to see.”

Alex lingers a little longer, listening to the guards compare what their wives-- naturally-- are making for Christmas dinner. He’s about to go when an image on one of the monitors captures his attention. He’s not sure what stands out about that picture in particular. Something in the figure’s posture, maybe. She seems to be a tall woman, not quite as hunched and wizened as the people Alex still sees in his nightmares of this place. He’s about to take a step into the room, get a closer look. But then the video feed skips to another cell, another prisoner. Another person that isn’t going to be saved.

“ _Alex!_ ” Mimi calls sharply from down the hall. “Let’s go. We’re running out of time.” 

He turns away from the monitors and follows her.

  
  
  


“This place seems-- a lot more staffed up than I remember it being in real life,” Alex murmurs to Mimi, when they pass the third orderly in twenty yards. 

Mimi’s answer is an absent grimace. She’s been scanning the maps posted every so often along the hallways, like there’s something in particular she’s looking for. Alex can’t say he’s excited to know what that is, but at this point in the parade of horrors, he also doesn’t see much point in pre-anticipating it. The travesties of this imaginary world, it seems, will come in their time, whether Alex wants them to or not.

“Do you have any idea why that might be?” he prompts Mimi again. It’s not just idle curiosity motivating the question. There’s enough overlap between this world and the real world that, if there’s a reason the number of personnel assigned to this Caulfield is triple what Alex saw in his own world, he’d like to know why-- especially if that reason suggests there might be more dormant Project Shepherd cells in Alex’s world than are already on his running tracker.

“Hm?” Mimi asks, before tearing her attention away from the walls and turning back to Alex. “Oh, right. Yes. Caulfield is a bigger operation in this world.”

“Yeah, I gathered that. Why?”

Mimi’s jaw tightens. “They-- have more material to work with, in this world. More interested parties. Come on-- down this way.”

Alex is already halfway through a follow-up question when he collides with another staff member-- this one wearing a labcoat-- as he comes around the corner. To Alex’s embarrassment, his leg goes out from under him, and he winds up on his ass on the linoleum. 

If there was any remaining doubt that Mimi’s abilities are shielding them from being observed by the personnel here, it would be eliminated when the labcoat guy bends down to pick up his papers, without any apparent awareness of the fact that he just bodily ran into an unauthorized visitor, who’s now sprawled out on the floor. Labcoat is just about to straighten up and walk away when Alex catches sight of the sender line on one of his printed-out emails.

It says Dr. Liz Ortecho.

“Mimi!” Alex bellows, not caring whether Labcoat hears him or not.

Mimi’s already a few feet down the hall, but she stops when she hears Alex’s call. Freezes, more like. That’s Alex’s first clue. That she already knows exactly what Alex has seen. Clues two, three, and four are the way she dawdles before she turns, and tips her face toward the floor, and won’t quite meet Alex’s eyes.

Alex knows he doesn’t look particularly dignified as he claws his fingers into the wall and hops as he tries to stand up and get his leg back underneath him properly. He tries so hard, usually, not to do anything that draws people’s attention to his disability. To one of the ways in which he is vulnerable. But he couldn’t give less of a damn about that right now.

“You said that Liz did research for the military,” he says-- _accuses_ , really-- when he’s finally standing upright again.

It’s not phrased like a question, but it is one, and Mimi obviously knows that. Her voice, when she answers, sounds too small. “And she does. Do research for the military.”

Alex rolls his eyes, incredulous. “There’s the military, and then there’s _Project Shepherd_. That seems like a pretty important detail to just leave out!”

“In her defense,” Mimi offers-- and Alex thinks his scoff makes clear how much he’s dying to hear what defense there could possibly be-- “she’s never been to this location-- or anywhere that aliens are held. She doesn’t have the clearance. Alex, she has _no idea_ where the samples she works with come from.” 

“Then where does she _think_ the military is getting a steady supply of alien cells?”

Mimi sighs-- maybe the most exhausted sigh she’s heaved all night. Which makes sense. It’s getting later. The night is getting darker. In more ways than one.

“The official story is that the cells are the preserved remains of aliens who were captured and immediately executed after the crash. 'A regrettable but understandable instance of overzealous response to an invasion threat, so soon after World War II.'” Mimi rolls her eyes at the cleaned-up military-ese. “The fact that the military is still holding _live_ aliens is on the strictest need-to-know. Pretty much no one except the people you see here tonight has a clue. And even some of them are under the impression that the prisoners are war criminals who were caught attempting to colonize the planet to gain a source of human slave labor.”

“Jesus.” 

Alex lets himself lean against the wall. It’s an insidious, ingenious bit of spin. A cover story that conceals so many sins with just enough of the truth that the whole crooked mission almost comes off sounding righteous. He can’t help but think that his father would have been proud of whoever came up with it. 

“I think that, from Liz’s perspective, if the aliens are already dead and beyond her help, then their remains might as well serve a purpose.” Mimi purses her lips, her eyebrows drawing in. “In some way, I think, she believes that her work is meant to honor their deaths.”

That sounds like Liz, Alex can’t help but think, with a heavy sigh of his own. And he’s not even sure that he’s equipped to work through the ethics of it himself. As far as Liz knows, the wrong done to the aliens is a dusty historical artifact. And if using their cells now lets her cure cancer or Alzheimer’s or whatever disease she’s eradicating today . . . 

All the same, he has to ask. “Doesn’t she think it’s strange that the cells have stayed alive this long? If all the aliens supposedly died in 1947?”

Mimi’s expression darkens even further. “The cells that Liz works with-- they don’t come directly from individual aliens.”

“Then where do they come from?” Alex asks, frowning. 

But Mimi is already walking away again, venturing farther down the hallway. 

Alex rubs his hand over his face before he follows her. He’s limping a little bit as he goes, thanks to his tumble earlier. It keeps him far enough behind Mimi that he sees when she stops in front of one of the plexiglass windows built into the wall, and exhales hard, letting her shoulders drop. As she stands there, eyes fixed on the glass, her fingers come up to cover her mouth.

“Mimi?” Alex asks, approaching slowly. Not sure he wants to see what it is that’s made Mimi go chalky and distraught, even though she’s clearly been looking for it since they walked through the front door.

Mimi doesn’t seem to notice him. Just keeps staring through the window with her fingertips pressed to her lips. 

“Pods,” she finally whispers, still not looking away from the glass. 

The word sets off an instantaneous reaction in Alex. He makes his steps even slower. In case it does the same for his suddenly rabbiting heart rate.

“What did you say?” 

Mimi twists her head away from the glass to face him. “You asked where the cells Liz works with come from,” she says-- louder now. Her voice is slow and deliberate and nearly shaking with emotion. “They _come_ from the _pods_.”

But Alex barely hears the explanation. Because he’s close enough to the glass now that he can see what Mimi is seeing. _Who_ Mimi is seeing. It’s the same woman Alex saw on the video feed earlier. She’s hollow-eyed and bird-boned, but still straight-backed and sneering and far too young to have been in here for seventy years.

She’s also Isobel.

  
  
  


“Oh my God.”

Alex thinks he’s said that a few times already, but he can’t find anything else to say, or to think, or to-- _anything_. 

Mimi was right when she said earlier that the nightmare was only beginning. Because _this-_ \- right here-- Isobel with her head shaved, a shapeless jumpsuit falling off her usually immaculate form. _This_ is the eleventh hour of every shaking-awake nightmare that Alex has had about Caulfield since the first time he was here.

(This is one-third of that nightmare, actually. And every ounce of Alex’s hardfought experience with compartmentalizing and disassociating is preventing him from thinking about the final third. The last image, that he always sees right before he wakes up dry-heaving.)

For lack of anything better, more constructive, to do, Alex presses his hand against the thick glass that’s restraining Isobel. But the Isobel of this world is more than a little bit feral, and she jumps toward the barrier with a curl to her lip, like she’d bite Alex’s hand right off if he found his way into that cage with her.

_Good_ , he thinks with dark satisfaction. He hopes she’s bitten and clawed and enacted whatever retribution she can against the bastards that keep her locked in here.

“What the hell happened?” Alex asks, turning to Mimi with wide eyes. “Why is she in here?”

It’s an idiotic question. Alex knows exactly why she’s in here. Why _all_ the aliens are in here. Because this is what humans do to people that they fear. Unless other humans are willing to stop them.

Mimi, for once, shows mercy and answers the question that Alex is actually asking, but can’t get his neurons firing well enough to ask. 

“The pods only stayed safe in your world because of the plans that Nora and Louise made in the year between the crash and Nora being captured,” she explains. “Because Louise and Tripp and others watched them like hawks for fifty years--”

“--and _here_ , Nora and Louise both got captured before they could move the pods somewhere safe, let alone find people they trusted to guard them,” Alex finishes. Of course.

He feels like fifty years have passed in the last thirty seconds. But he suspects the last fifty years haven’t felt like that to Isobel.

“I thought you said that Isobel and Max were spending Christmas Eve at their mother’s house,” he blurts out. 

An inane thing to focus on right now, with a captive Isobel following his every move, radiating disdain and distrust. But there’s a part of him, he suspects, that’s hoping that he can catch Mimi in a lie and she’ll admit that this last leg of the journey she’s conjured for him is just her misguided attempt to convince him that the world wouldn’t be as idyllic as Alex has always expected-- hoped-- it would be, without his family throwing wrenches. As opposed to a vision of what the real world might have actually looked like.

But he has no such luck. Not that he really expected otherwise.

“‘Max’ and ‘Isobel’ have always been Ann Evans’ favorite names,” Mimi explains gently. “She wanted to give them to her first son and her first daughter. But when it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen for her in this world, she settled on giving the names to her pugs. There were never any children found wandering in the desert to carry them instead.”

Alex narrows his eyes at Mimi in a way that he hopes conveys that omitting that pertinent detail earlier in the evening was one hell of a misdirect, and she damn well knows it. But he doesn’t have the emotional energy to offer a more robust complaint than that right now. 

“Tell me everything,” he says instead.

“Do you really want to hear it?” 

“No,” he answers bluntly. “Tell me anyway.”

  
  
  


The story is more or less as he could have predicted. _Should_ have predicted. As soon as he learned about how Nora and Louise were captured in this world. If his head weren’t spinning in a million directions from finding himself back here.

It didn’t take long for the military to discover the pods, according to Mimi. Not even a year. And once it had them in possession, Project Keeper did exactly what it-- and its real-world counterpart-- have done to everything alien they’ve ever been able to get their hands on.

“They experimented on them,” Alex summarizes warily. “Of course they did.” 

Mimi has had trouble keeping her eyes away from her pacing, snarling ‘aunt’ during the telling of the story-- so much so that Alex strongly suspects that if Mimi were to call Isobel that name now, the earlier sarcasm would be missing. But she looks away long enough to add a correction to Alex’s account.

“Only one of them. At first. But they didn’t know what they were working with, and didn’t care if they caused damage. Within a few weeks it was ‘compromised.’” 

Mimi scoffs at what’s plainly another bit of face-saving jargon. 

“ _Compromised_. It was turned into _pulp_ ,” she translates. And then, quieter: “And so was the little boy inside.”

Alex’s heart stops. Which is supposed to be an expression, he thinks. But not this time. His heart literally stops. He can’t hear a single beat. 

“The little boy?” he just barely manages to ask. With what air, he’s not sure. There’s nothing in his lungs right now, either.

Mimi reaches for his hand, runs her strong thumb over his skin. “The cells from that destroyed pod are the ones that Liz studies. She has no idea--” 

Mimi’s voice falters. But she presses on. “She has no idea that they belong to the man who, in another world, is the love of her life.”

If Alex had any illusions before tonight about how myopic a person he is capable of being, when it comes to the love of _his_ life, they are shattered beyond repair by the all-consuming _relief_ he can’t stop himself from feeling when he pieces Mimi’s words together. And realizes that it was _Max_ who was torn apart by conscience-less researchers. _Max_ who died for no better reason than that a person with enough power saw him as less than human. 

That it was _Max_. And not--

“What happened to the other pods?” he makes himself ask.

“The scientists decided to wait on them. See what they’d do. Whether they’d open on their own.”

He blows out a breath, but he thinks it might just be habit. He feels his muscles move, but he’s certain there’s still no air coming in or out. “And did they? Open?”

Mimi nods, gesturing to Isobel. “They did. About twenty years ago. And when they did, Project Keeper took the children right to this hallway, to the cells that were already waiting for them.” 

Mimi steps closer, so that she can hold both of his hands. She squeezes them tight. 

“They took _both_ the children to this hallway.”

Still no heartbeat, Alex registers dimly. Still no breath. 

There’s an obvious question. Part of Alex’s brain is screaming it, he thinks. Or just screaming, period. But he can’t--

He can’t ask it.

Mimi doesn’t make him.

“The last cell before the stairway,” she whispers, squeezing his hands one more time before letting them fall. “Go and see for yourself.”

  
  
  


The walk to the far end of the hallway is endless. Or it might be instantaneous. 

Alex knows what’s coming. He’s not in any kind of suspense.

But then. He was never in any kind of suspense all those times his father spat out one of his preferred slurs and started reaching for the heaviest object in grasping distance, either. 

Knowing what was going to happen never made the moment of impact hurt less, any of those times.

It doesn’t now, either.

“ _Michael_.” 

The word leaps out of Alex’s throat without any conscious thought, taking parts of Alex’s heart along with it. Alex doesn’t think there’s a single coping strategy in his whole damn arsenal that could have stopped the word from escaping-- or the sob that follows it.

He finds that, for once, he doesn’t have an interest in holding anything in, anyway.

Not when that’s Michael. _His_ Michael. Weak and wary and-- _caged_. 

Alex follows his heart and walks right up to the glass, past experience be damned. But where Isobel had gone on the attack at the presence of a new human on her perimeter, Michael withdraws, hunching his shoulders and moving closer to the back wall of his cage.

His _cage_. 

Alex’s tears fall a little harder at the realization that this Michael has never walked outside this tiny space. Never put his hands on a guitar. Never even _seen_ the stars from Earth, let alone lain underneath them for hours, smiling and laughing and never shutting up with that know-it-all drawl of his that, annoyingly, actually _does_ know most everything. Shining ten times brighter than anything in the skies above him, just because-- 

Just because _Alex_ is there beside him. In love with him. Awful at it. But so unbearably in love.

“Oh God, _Michael_.” 

Alex can’t stop himself-- doesn’t stop himself-- from falling against the glass. Palms, forearms, forehead. As close to this Michael as he can get. Which-- an all too-familiar refrain-- is still not close enough.

He hears soft footsteps approaching slowly down the linoleum hallway. They stop a respectful distance away. 

“He won’t recognize that name,” Mimi calls softly, making Alex realize that he’s been murmuring it-- _Michael, Michael, Michael_ \-- without stopping. “They call him A43 here.”

Alex snaps his neck around to face her, without letting his hands lift away from the glass. “That is _not_ his _name_ ,” he growls out, as lethally protective as an animal with a broken paw, even though Mimi’s not the true object of his bottomless rage. 

She opens her mouth, maybe to tell him so. But she suddenly changes gears and lets out a soft “oh,” her eyes going wide as she looks at something just past Alex.

Alex turns back to the glass and lets out a soft “oh” of his own. 

Michael has moved from the back of the cell to linger just a foot away from the glass. His brow is furrowed as he paces uncertainly between Alex’s hands, leaning his head close to the glass to study the lines of one palm and then the other. 

From this close, Alex is struck by the waxy pallor of skin that should be ruddy and gold all over, from days under the desert sun. 

Michael continues his exploration-- a scientist at heart, even if he doesn’t know it in this world. When he’s satisfied with whatever he’s looking for, he takes one more step forward and places one of his own palms against the glass, where it begins glowing red. The same way Nora’s had, when Alex and Michael been here together in Alex’s world. The _real_ world.

Michael inches his hand ever so slightly closer to Alex’s. Then stops and looks up at Alex through his eyelashes. 

Alex isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, because he _knows_ that look. Has seen it over and over. _Your turn,_ it says. 

He nods back at an uncomprehending Michael, and shifts his own hand against the glass, until the outlines of their palms eclipse each other. 

Alex watches through tears as Michael squeezes his eyes shut and tilts his head, like he’s investigating again. Except this time whatever he’s looking for is somewhere in the connection that Alex understands Michael has just opened up between them, even though Alex’s human mind can’t feel it.

Alex really wishes he could feel it.

After a moment, Michael’s features relax. Not all the way. But partly. Like after a loud sound passes or a throbbing headache eases. Just enough.

“Do you believe me now?” Mimi asks softly, coming up to Alex’s side. “You don’t have to kill all his monsters to bring him happiness, Alex. You just need to _be_ there.”

Tearing his eyes away from Michael’s newly peaceful expression is the hardest thing Alex has ever done.

“I can’t leave him, Mimi,” he says. Not here. Not in a world where Alex isn’t there to keep him safe. Where Alex isn’t there to _keep him_ , period.

Mimi smiles, tender and protective, like she’s watching a baby bird finally fly. “You never really do, silly. Not all the way. But time’s almost up. And this--” she looks at the prison walls around them, “-- it isn’t real, anyway.”

  
  
  


At Mimi’s words, the image ripples and the scene dissolves in more of that otherworldly light. Alex finds himself standing alone with Mimi in an empty desert, under stars that don’t match any constellations that Alex recognizes from Earth. 

For a long moment, Alex keeps his arm raised, like he’s still reaching out to Michael through the impassable glass. He lets it drop slowly to his side. On instinct, he begins to curl his fingers inward into a tight, impenetrable fist. But he decides against it, letting his fingers splay open instead, as he brings his hands up to catch the sobs that he decides not to keep in, either.

It’s a strange feeling, crying without trying to stop. To the extent he’d entertained the possibility at all before, he’d assumed it would feel pretty damn miserable. But it’s actually sort of freeing. Which is appropriate, because Alex isn’t entirely sad right now. He’s a lot of things-- grateful and overwhelmed and exhausted and, yeah, still a little bit guilty, too. That he gets to live in a world that’s awful and demoralizing in a lot of ways, but also so much better than the one that parts of him will always think he deserves. He doubts that feeling-- that someone like him has to justify their right to be happy-- will ever go away completely.

But above and beyond all those other feelings, Alex mostly just wants to go _home_. To the world that he’s a part of shaping, for better or worse.

To the man he loves for better or worse, too.

He feels Mimi’s arm slide around his waist, at the same time she props her chin on the jut of his shoulder.

“Not much longer,” she says. “Do you understand why I wanted to show you this now?”

Alex nods, blinking away the remnants of tears on his eyelashes. 

“You’ve done more good than you give yourself credit for,” she whispers, squeezing him tighter. “But even if you hadn’t. Even if the mistakes pile up sometimes. It’s enough that you’re _there_ and that you love him, Alex. And that you _try_.” 

Alex presses his lips together and blows out a breath, rolling his eyes up to look at the stars, finding that familiar comfort in them even though they aren’t the ones he recognizes.

“Thank you, Mimi.” 

He hears the little sniff that she tries to hide and tips his head to one side, to rest his cheek on top of her curly hair.

“Is there anything I can do for _you_?” he asks, still gazing up. “When we get back to the real world?”

Mimi sighs, long and loud, like she’s letting something go. “Just-- remember I’m still in here,” she tells him, her voice strong even as it wavers. “And I’m helping the best I can. Even when it’s hard to tell.” 

“I can do that,” Alex promises, as the stars bleed together and begin to flare.

This time, as the light overwhelms him, he closes his eyes and thinks, _I’ll be home for Christmas, cowboy. Don’t stop waiting_.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


IV.

When Alex blinks his eyes open, he’s back in Sunset Mesa. The familiar photographs and trinkets are scattered everywhere, and Mimi herself is sleeping peacefully on top of the covers. They’re a dim, earthly peach, Alex notes-- which his once-again dim, earthly vision appreciates.

Alex stretches in the matching chair, wincing as his low back protests. Alex knows his own body-- and all the ways it’s changed over the years, both asked-for and unwanted-- to recognize that as a sign that he’s been sacked out in this chair-- physically at least-- a lot longer than he should have been. The fact that the end credits to _It’s a Wonderful Life_ are now scrolling over the television screen isn’t promising, either.

When he checks his phone to see the time-- and the four missed calls-- he shoots out of the chair, aches and pains be damned. He has a date to keep. And this is one Christmas Eve he’s going to keep it.

Even so, he can’t leave without saying-- _Something_. No matter that it will never be enough. 

But . . . maybe it doesn’t have to be enough. Maybe ‘enough’ is just-- being here. And saying it.

“Mimi,” he says softly, leaning over the bed and shaking her shoulder gently through her robe. 

Mimi’s eyes blink open slowly. It’s jarring, seeing them only half-focused again, staring at something in the middle distance that’s not really here. A day ago, Alex would have assumed that means she’s not really here, either.

He knows better now.

“Mimi, I have to go. I have a date, remember? I just wanted to say Merry Christmas first. And-- _thank you._ ” 

Mimi doesn’t give any indication of having heard him. But her hand reaches out to clasp his wrist. “You don’t have to chase the stars,” she tells him solemnly. “They fall to _you_.” 

Alex nods, not comprehending, but-- listening, anyway. 

“I’ll keep that in mind, Mimi. I promise.”

Mimi nods back, letting go of his wrist and settling back down in the bed. The last words she says are muffled into the pillow, but Alex hears them.

“That bow’s a little crooked,” she mutters, before drifting off again.

  
  
  


Alex is just pulling the door to Mimi’s room shut behind him when he sees Maria striding down the hallway in a floor-length duster and at least two scarves, not one of which has a single color in common with the others.

The sight makes something inside him uncoil, that he hadn’t realized was still holding tight.

“Alex!” She stops in her tracks, surprise quickly edging into guilt. “Oh, sweetie, I told you, you didn’t have to stay here so late. It’s Christmas Eve! Michael must be--”

She stops again-- verbally this time, instead of physically-- before holding both hands up in surrender. “Right. That’s-- not any of my business.” She winces. “Ugh, sorry. I know I keep-- I’m not trying to make it weird, I promise. Just-- thank you for being here tonight; that’s all I wanted to say. That and-- have a _really_ merry Christmas, Alex, okay? I mean it.”

She gives him a bright smile that Alex can tell is forced, based on the years that they were almost as close as siblings. It’s not the affection that she’s faking, he thinks. But the increasingly exhausting conceit that everything is fine between them.

He knows the feeling.

“I’m not okay with what happened between you and Michael,” Alex blurts out to her hastily withdrawing form. When she turns back around to face him, her eyes are flying-saucer wide.

Alex can’t exactly blame her. He’s spent months telling everyone-- including himself-- just the opposite.

“I know I haven’t said that to you before. Or to anyone really. I keep saying I’m okay with it. I keep telling myself that I _have_ to be okay with it. But. I think that’s because part of me thinks that-- I don’t deserve to _not_ be okay with it. Because I didn’t deserve to-- Well. At any rate. I don’t-- want to feel that way anymore.” 

“Oh, _Alex_ ,” Maria sighs, her forehead creasing in genuine compassion.

“I’m not saying this because I want to-- talk about it now, or anything. Or to make you feel bad. I just know that things have been off between us, and I don’t think they’ll stop being off until I actually-- work through some things. And I don’t know how long that will take. But in the meantime, I just want to say that-- I’m glad you’re here.” 

Maria tilts her head. “Here as in the scenic hallway of Sunset Mesa?”

“Just-- here,” he answers with a shrug, pushing away the memory of the Wild Pony’s parking lot gone dark and empty.

She watches him carefully, eyes narrowing, as she considers his words. Alex wonders if she’s looking in his ‘aura’ again. If she sees anything about what he’s experienced tonight written there. 

Whatever she finds brings out a real smile. He knows it’s real because it’s so much smaller and more careworn than the one she wore a moment ago. 

“I’m glad you’re here, too,” she says quietly. And then, “Merry Christmas, Alex,” one more time, before shuffling past him toward Mimi’s room.

  
  
  


Alex doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy to see giant inflatable reindeer in his life. They greet him as soon as he steps out into the frigid parking lot-- a larger-than-lifesize reminder that he’s back in the world where he belongs. 

He’s not the only thing that’s back to his rightful place, either. He allows himself one moment to relish the weight of Tripp’s dog tags around his neck, his fist closing softly around the metal, before he’s in his SUV and racing back toward Roswell city limits, as fast as the speed limit will allow. 

The lights that greet him are a welcome sight for once, and he finds himself feeling unexpectedly emotional as he passes landmarks he’s seen a thousand times before. The police station, which makes him think of Jim’s legacy-- both good and bad-- and the way that Kyle does his best to carry on the good parts of it. The Evans house, where Isobel and Max-- _really_ Isobel and Max-- are probably rolling their eyes as Ann fusses over a picture-perfect appetizer tray, but still wouldn’t miss her party for any world. The UFO Emporium-- _oh_ , the UFO Emporium; Graham Green’s promise to unveil the secrets of the universe may have been false advertising for most people, but it will always be the place that _Alex_ discovered the force that holds the planets together. And the Crashdown, too, of course-- still open all night for anyone who needs to be there. Alex, uncharacteristically sentimental, is hoping that will include Max-- if not tonight then some night soon, here in a world where Max and Liz still have the chance to find their way back to one another. It’s never the easy thing to do, Alex knows. But God, is it worth it.

These are all the places and most of the people that he loves, Alex realizes-- all wrapped up in tinsel and LED bulbs and novelty kitsch. Of _course_ he wants to right every wrong they’ve suffered. Of course he wants to protect them. But maybe tonight, he can let it be enough _just_ to love them. 

Maybe tonight he can accept-- or try to accept-- that not every vulnerability can be defended. Not even by Alex. 

And that Alex’s love has value, anyway.

He comes to a red light and reaches for his turn signal. Right will take him to the road that goes past Sanders’ scrapyard. Left will take him home. 

He checks the time again. Michael would have left Ann’s party at least an hour ago by now. Logic says that, when Alex didn’t answer his calls, he went back to the airstream. So, Alex should turn right if he wants to find him.

But-- _something else_ tells Alex that you don’t have to chase the stars. They fall to you. 

Alex chooses left.

  
  
  


When Alex turns onto his block and sees the familiar baby blue truck-- not rusting away abandoned in this world, but parked right in Alex’s driveway like it belongs there-- it takes all of his self-control to bring the SUV to a full stop before parking and jumping out, nearly garrotting himself with the seatbelt in the process. He barely notices.

What he does notice is that someone has taken the time to flip on the legitimately blinding array of Christmas lights that have covered every inch of Alex’s house for over a week now-- almost none of which are fastened with anything that conforms to terrestrial notions of engineering. There are colored lights lining every window, and white ones wrapping the legs of every patio chair, and even an all-red set winding through the chili peppers hanging from the eaves. And of course, the piece de resistance: the light-up Star Wars characters that Michael has chosen to arrange in a blasphemous alien nativity that’s gotten Alex dubious looks from Mr. and Mrs. Larracuente across the street, but big thumbs-up’s from the ten-year-old Larracuente twins.

That _would_ be the piece de resistance, anyway. If not for the _actual_ alien miracle crouching on Alex’s front stoop, with his hands shoved inside the sleeves of his jacket.

Seeing Michael-- star-bright and heavy-lidded, all passion and genius and naked affection-- is always enough to draw Alex’s quieter heart into the orbit the two of them were made for. Seeing him _tonight_ , though-- seeing with his own eyes that Michael is healthy and mouthy and _free_ \-- exerts a gravity that Alex can’t begin to equal. He lets it pull him to the stoop, where Michael is standing up and dusting off his pants, opening his mouth like he’s about to offer a greeting.

He doesn’t get the chance to. 

Alex wraps both hands around the back of Michael’s neck instead and drags him into a kiss so hungry Michael’s cowboy hat flies off his head, landing unmarked and unmissed somewhere on the stones behind them. That suits Alex’s purposes fine; he sinks his fingers into tangled curls, before he cups them against the curve of Michael’s skull instead, then holds them to Michael’s stubbled cheek, then trails them softly over the spot where the hinge of Michael’s jaw is working-- the only constant being Alex’s boundless devotion to every place his hands can touch. 

Except--

That’s not the _only_ constant. 

There’s also _Michael’s_ devotion. To Alex-- body, soul, and all the rest. Michael flexes his fingers against Alex’s waist, and hauls Alex flush against him, and coaxes their tongues against each other again and again in an aching, needy dance that Alex feels all the way through him. Each stroke is a love song, and tonight Alex lets himself hear it and sing it back and not ask _why_.

When they finally drift apart, slow and dreamy, Michael’s eyelashes are fluttering.

“What’d I do to deserve _that_?” he asks, a hazy rumble that Alex can feel where their chests are still pressed tight.

“Nothing,” Alex answers, without hesitation. “You didn’t have to do anything at all.”

_You just needed to be here_.

Michael hums and drops his forehead to Alex’s shoulder, nuzzling into the side of his neck. He’s still a little bit drunk on Alex’s affection and it makes Alex cradle him that much closer.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting tonight,” Alex says into his hair, as they stand there letting their orbits slow and synchronize. “There were some things I had to sort out.”

Michael shrugs against Alex’s chest. “I got your texts about needing to look after Mimi. It’d be a dick move if I got mad at you for being a good friend.”

“I’m pretty sure she ended up looking after me.”

Michael doesn’t question the idea that Mimi would be the one taking care of Alex, just rubs his palm against Alex’s flank. “Did she help, at least? With-- y’know. Everything?”

Alex’s brow furrows. “Everything?”

He feels the snort against his collar bone as much as he hears it.

“I know you well enough to know when you’re struggling, Private. Between the booster club around your dad’s memorial, and the holiday, and _me_ \--”

“It’s not you,” Alex answers automatically. 

“No?” Michael pulls back far enough to really look at Alex, eye to eye. “‘Cause all week I’ve been watchin’ your face do the thing that says you think you’re a burden on me, and we can play another thousand rounds of ‘who screwed up worse’ if you really want to, but at the end of the day, you and I both know who helped put that idea in your head.”

Alex can’t deny it-- not entirely. There are things that they’ve each done that have left scars on the other, and this is one of Alex’s deepest. Just like Alex running away is Michael’s. But all the same--

“You weren’t the only one who put that idea in my head. And you’re not the one who’s chosen to feed it all these years.”

“Well. Can I at least be the one who tells you, unequivocally, that it’s bullshit?”

Alex can’t hold back his grin at that. They’re still standing close enough that he barely has to shift to wrap his arms around Michael’s waist again. “If memory serves you already have. Several times.”

“Then one more can’t hurt,” Michael shoots back, even as his fingers curl more tightly into Alex’s sides. “I’m serious, Alex,” he adds, his eyes and his voice both proving the truth of his words. “All that crap I said last year about us being too hard or too sad . . . none of it was true. I was pissed and I was hurting and I was a jackass, but mostly I was just plain wrong. You are not the thing that makes my life harder, baby. You are the thing that makes my life--”

“Wonderful?” Alex offers. It’s mostly a joke, but the space between the two of them is charged with so much reverence that it comes out hushed and bashful. 

Michael offers up the crooked grin that always turns Alex’s heart into guitar strings for his plucking. “I was gonna say ‘bearable,’” he teases, “but what the hell-- it’s Christmas.”

“Ugh, shut up,” Alex commands, but he’s already moving in to close the little distance that remains between them. 

When the kiss breaks this time, Alex keeps his eyes closed for a moment longer, his forehead pressed against Michael’s. He’ll take _this_ as his Christmas present, he thinks: Michael safe, or as safe Alex can make him. And just as important: Michael, smiling. Michael, loved.

Michael, in other words, with Alex.

“Come on,” Alex murmurs low between them. “Let’s go in and I’ll give you your Christmas present.”

“That better be a euphemism, Private.”

Alex smiles as he laces their fingers together and pulls Michael into his side. It’s only then that he notices what’s different about his front door tonight.

There, in the one spot that wasn’t already covered by Michael’s lights, is a plain evergreen wreath. With an alarm-red ribbon. 

The bow, he notices with a bittersweet twist of understanding, _is_ a little crooked.

“Is that--” he asks, trailing off when he feels Michael smile against his neck.

“A little extra Christmas spirit,” Michael shrugs. “Not like the old bastard will miss it.” 

He tucks himself closer into Alex before adding, more quietly, “You deserve it, Alex. A hell of a lot more than he ever did.”

Alex stands there under Christmas lights, and under starlight, with Michael’s hand in his.

“Yeah,” he agrees, breathing easy. “We deserve this.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year; I'm happy that you're here to share them.


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